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alternative title(s): Likely Outcome Plan
Batman Gambit
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Sterling: Of course, you know your entire plan depended on me being a self-serving utter bastard. Nate: Mmm, yeah, that's a stretch.
Provided that a character is smart enough and manipulative enough, they can get the people around them to do just about anything. Sometimes this can be accomplished by the power of charisma, but other times it needs to be perpetrated through an elaborate scheme. This scheme takes into account everything that The Chessmaster (as well as the viewer) knows about the characters being manipulated, and uses it against them. The patsies in this scheme only act and respond as their own predictability dictates and all the pieces fall into place.
This is the essence of the Batman Gambit, which is a storytelling device that can be used by any unusually intelligent character, be they good or evil, to achieve what they want by using their own intelligence to make sure that the most probable outcome that is beneficial to them arises.
This trope relies heavily on Flaw Exploitation manipulating, although the term "flaw" is used very loosely here. Sometimes the flaw is that the villains are so predictable that they'll take the first chance they have to do something mean and underhanded. Other times, the flaw is that the heroes are so heroic that they'll act for the greater good without even thinking about it. A particularly Genre Savvy person will recognize the fact that heroes always win — and design a plan based on the assumption that they will succeed.
The key difference between the Xanatos Gambit and the Batman Gambit is that while the former is structured so that any outcome will work to the advantage of the gambit instigator (and is thus "foolproof") the Batman Gambit does have a failure condition. Indeed, this failure condition will often be quite obvious and foreseeable to the audience, who have the benefit of perspective and objectivity. The victims of the gambit, however, do not enjoy those luxuries.
The key to making a Batman Gambit work is by carefully guiding and manipulating the motivations of those involved, so that the "obvious" course of action to them is to do what will make the gambit work and it never occurs to them to do things that would ruin the gambit. Because of the presence of this obvious failure mode, anyone who tries to pull off a Batman Gambit and fails often just ends up looking like a fool.
In short, if there is any reasonable action the pawns could take that would ruin the entire scheme, then it's a Batman Gambit.
See also Manipulative Bastard, for the character most likely to attempt/pull these off; Unwitting Pawn, for the people who unwittingly help the Gambit along, and Spanner in the Works/ Unwitting Instigator of Doom, for the people who unintentionally send it spinning into disaster.
Named after Batman, who typically uses these as a way of showing off his Crazy Prepared superpower.
Contrast with the MacGuffin Delivery Service, and the failed attempt, Springtime for Hitler. Also see Indy Ploy for the exact opposite. A gambit that relies almost entirely on misdirection is a Kansas City Shuffle. If things do go wrong, but the person keeps adjusting things so that Plan A works anyway, he's playing Xanatos Speed Chess. The Tape Knew You Would Say That is a subtrope.
Not an Amalgam Universe character. Also not a Slash Fic.
Examples
open/close all folders
Batman (or used on Batman)
Comics:
- Batman has a reputation for the Batman Gambit (see the name, duh), but since the mid-1990s, his Gambits consistently get hijacked by other people — with disastrous consequences.
- An example of this failing spectacularly comes from Batman as well, in the Wargames arc. Spoiler sets into motion a plan of Batman's which should, theoretically, end up with him in control of all of Gotham's gangs via a proxy. The whole plan hinged on the fact that he was supposed to be present at a meeting between all the heads of the gangs via one of his aliases, Matches Malone. Spoiler went and set off the plan without telling him, and due to his absence, the gang leaders got trigger happy and basically took each other out, leaving a power vacuum that sparked the out of control gang war.
- In the "Hush" storyline, he finds himself facing off against a mind-controlled Superman, and is clearly physically outmatched. His solution is to have Catwoman dangle Lois Lane off a roof, and give Supes the choice of either saving her or continuing the fight. This trick would never work if he didn't know full well that even a brainwashed Clark would never let Lois die, and that Catwoman is just amoral enough to threaten an innocent woman without actually meaning it. He may even have predicted that Lois' struggles would cause her to fall, adding an element of urgency to the situation.
- Batman even managed to set this up without hinting overtly at Superman's secret identity. He simply tells Catwoman that Supes cares about the people who work at the Daily Planet. There are three people there at the time, giving her three options; Lois, Perry White, or Jimmy Olson, any of whom Clark would gladly lay down his life for. It's Catwoman herself that decided Lois would be the best target, so she had no idea she was dangling Superman's wife from a ledge.
- The JLA arc "Tower of Babel" (the former page image
 ◊) is actually an example of one of Batman's contingencies being hijacked. It's somewhat masterfully combined with a second Batman Gambit specifically designed to keep Batman diverted while his stolen contingencies are being used against the rest of the League: Ra's Al Ghul steals Bruce's parents' bodies from their graves and dangles them above a Lazarus Pit.
- It's worth noting that, while the League ultimately overcomes Batman's contingencies, they do so only by cooperating and remembering what they know about each other, something they probably wouldn't do under the kinds of circumstances Batman prepared the contingencies for.
- And the weakness in the hijack? All Batman had to do to stop the entirety of it was to pick up the phone and listen to the rest of the League for more than two seconds. It's no wonder Ra's is grinning so much when he does The Reveal.
- Darkseid had one for when Batman attacked him: he predicted that Batman would succeed in finding his way back to his own time, so he set things up such that when it occurred, Batman would bring with him a weapon capable of killing the entire JLA. Of course, Batman eventually countered with a Xanatos Gambit of his own, hence the fail condition.
Fan Fic:
- In Marvel/DC: After Hours, Batman shows once again why this trope is named after him. Despite naturally not knowing about the events of "One More Day", he is able to piece together enough clues to know how to use Peter's Deal with the Devil to convince the Joker he's given up and force Mephisto himself to save the day.
Films - Animated:
- Batman: Under the Red Hood indicates that he taught this to his sidekicks as well. Red Hood hatches a plan that's entirely dependent on the assumption that, when pressed hard enough, Black Mask would free The Joker from Arkham.Which is, of course, exactly what happens.
Films - Live Action:
- Ironically, every single thing the Joker does in The Dark Knight is a Batman Gambit. This is perhaps the most obvious when he is in prison and goads one police officer to try and beat him up, overpowers the officer, and uses him as leverage to get his phone call. Of course the call he makes is to the cell phone that blows up the station. If, at any point along the line, the police had acted differently than he'd anticipated, none of this would have worked.
- It should be noted that this was apparently the Joker's Plan C. The cops were obligated to give him a phone call when they arrested him. When they didn't, he demanded one before revealing where the hostages were. When he ran out of time on that, he manipulated the cop. If that hadn't worked, he presumably would have had a plan D up his sleeve.
- If the Joker's Batman Gambit relied on an urban legend (the police aren't necessarily obliged to give you the fabled One Phone Call), it wasn't a very good gambit...
- To explain: you are guaranteed counsel. Which means that when you ask for a lawyer, the police stop talking to you and leave you alone until a lawyer shows up. If you don't already have a lawyer, they'll contact legal aid for you and one will show up. That said, if a crazy clown is holding a shard of glass to a colleague's throat and asking for a phone call... I suspect they'd hand him the damn phone.
Western Animation:
- Batman: The Animated Series:
- The episode "The Cape and Cowl Conspiracy" (based on an earlier comic story) had a crime boss hire a specific villain with a penchant for death traps to hunt down and get Batman's cape and cowl. After several attempts, he managed to do so, apparently outwitting the great Batman. Upon returning the items to his employer, the crime boss asked about a recent job the villain did concerning miscellaneous important items. After he explained the job, the crime boss revealed himself to be Batman, who organized the entire ordeal so that the villain would reveal where the items were as well as have the key to the locker holding them. If Batman had thwarted the death traps and captured him conventionally, they probably wouldn't have gotten any information or the key from him.
- Harley actually manages to outsmart Batman — more than the Joker ever could — so he whips out a Batman Gambit and convinces her the Joker wouldn't believe she could pull it off. So of course to prove it she brings the Joker to Batman... right where he wants him, because Joker would never let anyone else kill Bats, making this a Batman Gambit that used Harley to pull a Batman Gambit on the Joker. All while chained upside-down and half-conscious.
- Of course, this all started because Harley nailed a Batman Gambit on Batman. She pretended to be betraying Joker by giving his plans to his worst enemy, on the condition that Batman protect her from her boyfriend's wrath. Then she rigged a robotic Joker decoy to attack her and Batman at the rendezvous point. Batman did as he had promised - he tackled Harley to shield her from the bullets. If he had not done so, she would never have been able to get close enough to him that she could stick him in the back with a needle full of sedative. No wonder he was impressed.
- Justice League:
- Batman pulls a particularly brilliant one, outwitting what essentially amounts to the Injustice League and getting them to undermine their own plans and betray one another... all while immobilized in a full-body restraint system in the basement. He proceeds to tell The Joker that he could've escaped at any point he wanted, but only stayed around to keep an eye on him.
- In "Wild Cards," when he talks to Harley Quinn suggesting that the Joker's likely more interested in the girl he's standing next to on TV while he sends Harley out to do the grunt work. She refuses to turn on the Joker and seemingly knocks out Batman then returns to the Joker to talk things out. Joker promptly slaps her aside, quickly realizing that it was all Batman's plan to get her to return to base and lead him to his headquarters, which is just what happened.
- There's also a double Batman Gambit — both carried out by Bat...men! Justice Lord Batman tries to convince our Batman to join the cause, but Bats ends up reversing it.
- During the same episode, The Flash is imprisoned with the rest of the good Justice League, and Justice Lord Batman is told to guard them. In the middle of his shift, Flash seems to go into cardiac arrest. Justice Lord Batman panics and rushes to revive him, only to find that the Flash is still very much alive after he knocks him out with one hand. Flash knew that something bad happened to the alternate Flash, and that Batman would not want to watch that happen again. If the bad Batman had not had the same emotional difficulties with losing people he loves that the good Batman has, the plan wouldn't have worked.
- And then, when Flash releases the good Batman, he reveals yet another such gambit. He knew that the Justice Lord Batman would watch him more closely than the others, and probably catch on to any escape plan he had. However, the bad Batman wouldn't expect such a thing coming from Flash, and so Batman's gambit was - just to wait and see what the kid came up with. It worked for both of them.
Anime & Manga
- Light uses this technique in Death Note by having Misa and himself give up control of the Death Note to another individual to throw L off his track and clear his and Misa's names. The plan is uncannily successful, and ultimately L is killed as a result.
- "Just as planned!"
- In the movie, however, things go differently: L figures out what happened the second he gets his hands on Light's note and sees the rule about losing memories. Seeing Light's plan, L plays along, writing his own name in a Death Note (making him immune to death by any other Note for 23 days), and catches Light in the act.
- What's particularly notable about the manga example is that technically the person whose actions Light is anticipating is himself. And it's not even really himself, but rather what he would have been had he never found the Death Note. In other words, he has to anticipate just what he would have done and how he would have acted had he never found the Death Note, do the same process with Misa, work in how L and the gang would react to that, and then work in how the as of yet to him unknown corporate executive is going to act, and then figure out how everyone's going to react to that.
- At which point it really becomes Gambit Roulette.
- He also knew that if the plan had failed, he would have been safe and lived, although not as Kira, because Higuchi would be caught and blamed for everything. Light would then be off the hook and live his life out normally... though, as the movie shows, even that wasn't without a failure condition.
- L staves off many episodes using this technique, in fact his entire operation in the first half could probably be summed up as this. Serial killer eliminating prisoners all over the world through methods unseen, unheard, and untraceable? Set yourself up on television with a substitute so that Kira will attempt to make a move against you. Before he does that, make sure the broadcast is isolated in the single region where similar killings were determined to have started. Thus, since your substitute was killed in that area and was killed in the same way as many others, that person must be in that area, watching TV at some point, and must only be able to kill with a name and a face. Needless to say, Light is thoroughly whipped by this.
- The next part of L's operation also did this. There was no way to witness Kira physically, but L made extreme observation of his killing patterns and even formed a "personality profile" off of it. When he whittled this down to Light Yagami, he decided to meet Light in college. And how did he introduce himself? Telling Light that he was the detective hunting Kira, and knowing subconsciously that there was no way Light could do anything about it. He then matches Kira's characteristics - childishness, poor sportsmanship - with Light's regular behaviors. As the investigation winds down and lines have been drawn, L even delves into Genre Savvy by warning his investigation team that should he be killed within a certain timespan, they should follow his original assumption that Light IS Kira.
- Izaya Orihara of Durarara!! oozes this trope like a fountain. He has stated that it is solely for his own amusement, but there is no denying that his manipulative capabilities over the residents of Ikebukuro are amazing. Few have been able to work their way around his plans.
- The only person Izaya opts to work his way around is Shizu-chan.
- The character Joseph Joestar in part 2 of the manga Jojos Bizarre Adventure states that him drawing the character Cars to be on top of the volcano when it erupts in the final battle was all part of an elaborate battle strategy. However, this is quickly thrown out the window seconds later when Joseph's inner thoughts reveal that Cars standing there when the volcano erupted was just a coincidence, and the Joseph simply didn't want it to look like he only won due to a fluke.
- Jotaro is good at this. He showed us how by outwitting Daniel J D'arby in a high stakes with souls on the line. Jotaro not only caught D'arby off guard with various call outs, but raised the stakes higher than D'arby could believe, eventually coming to a head when D'arby subconsciously admitted defeat.
- The Major pulled one against Alucard in Hellsing. Recognizing Alucard's and his master's style, he fabricated an emergency by having several traitor vampires slaughter the entire population of a VTOL warship, and sent one of Millennium's core lieutenants there to apparently trap and kill Alucard when he was sent to deal with the situation. Instead, everybody in the ship was to be the trap to lock him in the destroyed warship when he inevitably slaughtered the entire squad, as vampires cannot cross water. While Alucard used his powers to psychically drag the damaged ship to the Thames, the Major's army had already slaughtered London and forced a Catholic-Protestant-vampire war in the burning city, making him too late to stop it.
- The entire plot of the Ghost in the Shell movie is one big Batman Gambit by an opponent aptly called the Puppetmaster. At one point he hacks into the heavily secured factory that builds the replacement parts for the Majors and Batous cybernetic bodies and had it create a unique cybernetic body. Then he had the body walk out of the factory and to the next highway to step in front of the next passing truck. As access to the factory would also allow him to temper with the replacement parts for Section 9, they really want the remains of the rogue cyborg body in their lab for analyzation. Exactly where the AI wanted to be, but couldn't get to without his handlers stopping him. Everything that happens in the movie is all part of his plan to get an opportunity to talk with the Major.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion: Gendo Ikari has an elaborate Xanatos Gambit in motion... probably. Mostly we get to see his various Batman Gambits using Rei and Shinji, most notably micromanaging Shinji's gradual emotional breakdown, and (perhaps) master minding Rei's Giant Mecha kamikaze run. Add his near supernatural power over women and you have an antagonist who is far beyond any of the main cast's league.
- It's definitely a Batman Gambit rather than a Xanatos Gambit, as he himself is unable to actually accomplish his goal, and the person who is capable of accomplishing it is able to completely ruin his entire efforts if they just refuse to do so. This is, of course, exactly what happens in End Of Evangelion. "I am not your doll."
- The heroes pull this off when Captain Misamaru of Martian Successor Nadesico successfully predicts the actions of the Jovians and herds their superweapon into a trap, by continually convincing them the trap is elsewhere.
- In Yu Yu Hakusho, the reason Sensui set it up so that the tunnel to Makai would be opened, and the events that came afterwards, is so that he could die in Makai at the hands of a powerful demon, since it would be nobler than to die of the terminal illness he had. Said strong demon happened to be Yusuke, possessed by the spirit of his ancestor, Raizen.
- Later in the manga-only final arc, it was revealed that everything the heroes faced was an elaborate setup by King Enma, who purposely pardoned dangerous criminals with the specific hope that his detectives would capture them and thus make himself look better.
- In The Prince Of Tennis, Badass Bookworm Sadaharu Inui is having his ass kicked in the courts by another Badass Bookworm, his former partner Renji Yanagi, who is as good as using info as Inui himself is. Then, Inui claims he won't use his data anymore... and it turns out this was fake, since he lulled Renji into a false sense of security and shaped their game into a copy of their last unfinished match. With this in mind, Inui ultimately wins.
- In general, several of the tennis games in the series use these Gambits as part of the strategy. Examples are Fuji Shuusuke (who let his brother's team manager from Saint Rudolph almost beat him, only to come back with a vengeance and CRUSH him as punishment for mistreating Yuuta) and Kawamura Takashi (who used on purpose two variations of the Hadokyuu to weaken Kabaji in the Hyoutei arc and force him into a draw) from Seigaku, as well as Masaharu Niou of Rikkaidai who switched places with his partner Hiroshi Yagyuu for half a game to trick both teammates and rivals into believing one was the other, confusing Eiji and Oishi and defeating them.
- Lelouch, the protagonist of Code Geass, does this a lot. Along with Lelouch, Cornelia and Schneizel also have been known to pull less convoluted Batman Gambits of their own. It must run in the family.
- To defeat Mao, a mind-reader, Lelouch distracts him with a recording that accurately predicts his responses to Lelouch's statements, allowing the police to close in without him noticing.
- In the second season, Lelouch pulls this stunt again, against Schneizel who really should have known better, and with a much more improbable level of precision.
- When Mao came back, he used his own power of absolute command to give himself orders to tell Suzaku to charge in guns blazing when he heard Lelouch scream, then wiped his own memory of this. Lelouch then plays right into Mao's hands, seemingly completely defeated. When he screams, Suzaku comes in and the gambit is revealed. It's hopelessly convoluted and yet masterful.
- When Lelouch, as Zero the masked terrorist, claims that he wishes to join Nunally's Special Administrative Region of Japan along with his Black Knights, he later makes a secret pact with the Britannians to have him pardoned for his crimes and be exiled safely, which allows the Britannians to attempt to engineer the situation in their favor: they would broadcast that they were pardoning Zero for all crimes at the opening ceremony, and Zero only, therefore meaning that the other members of the Black Knights were still accountable for crimes, and were thus betrayed by Zero. The Britannians had hoped that this would trigger a riot amongst the betrayed Black Knights, which would provide them with ample excuse to put them down with lethal force. Problem is, Lelouch had earlier made the point that Zero is an ideal, not a man. So, when everyone at the assembly suddenly puts on Zero masks, no one can try to force the issue. The only person who knows his identity, Suzaku, can't call him on it. Thus, they are all granted immunity and a safe trip out. It heavily relied on Suzaku being sentimental enough to stop the other government officials from opening fire on the crowd, and it came within a hair's breadth of backfiring.
- Lelouch often has plans that rely on the fact that while "other" people have a sense of honor, he does not, and uses it to trip them up. Good examples include the way he tricked Guilford into a duul of honor, and then pulled a sneaky trick on him. There's also him using the UFN leaders as hostages to trick the Black Knights into preventing Schneizel from nuking his ass, forcing him into conventional strategy.
- The infamous episode "The Stolen Mask" has what may be a potential BG, at least as far as the fans are concerned. A cat has stolen the Zero mask, and Lelouch and Suzaku chase it to the top of the clocktower; Lelouch slips on the roof and Suzaku catches him. This allows Lelouch to express gratitude and friendship towards Suzaku without appearing suspicious, which he uses to get Suzaku onto the Student Council, giving him some real friends and slowly moving the school towards accepting him in spite of his being Japanese. It also has the unintended*
Because let's be realistic here, Lelouch is a Magnificent Bastard but even he can't read a cat's mind
- An example where it isn't set up by a villain: everything in Card Captor Sakura (except for the Yaoi Guys) is an elaborate plan by Clow Reed to ensure that his magical creations would have the best master (Sakura) after his death. The reason Sakura captures the cards and then masters them is because if she didn't, they'll cause a lot of trouble in her town. However, Eriol (Clow's reincarnation, who kept all of his previous life's memories) made sure she wasn't in any real danger (or anyone else in town, for that matter). This is possible because Clow was prophetic to the point of omniscience, able to see the future so perfectly that he WAS able to see every consequence of his actions and what to cause to happen. Except for the Yaoi Guys, Eriol admits that one surprised him (he had intended Yue/Yukito to have a Bodyguard Crush on Sakura, but Yukito fell for Sakura's older brother instead). As an interesting side point, the whole point of this in the manga was to rid himself of that power, which would require Sakura to be a stronger mage than him.
- Of course, there was also the goal of making sure the Clow Cards power supply didn't fail, leading to their deaths, too. They couldn't run on Clow's residual energy forever, but the real danger was when they were left in limbo and Sakura had to master them.
- Griffith from Berserk does this against the Queen of Midland and a conspiracy of nobles who wanted him dead. The conspirators apparently poison Griffith, but unbeknownst to them, Foss, the key figure in the conspiracy to kill Griffith, is blackmailed by Griffith into putting a drug meant to give the appearance of death in his cup instead of poison. The Queen and her nobles, believing themselves to be victorious, all gather together in celebration at her castle, and that's when Griffith springs his trap, having them all locked inside the castle and then having the place set ablaze, killing them all.
- In Kurenai, the protagonist Benika pulls off such a gambit with her "kidnapping" of Murasaki Kuhouin. Although she assigned Shinkurou as a bodyguard to protect Murasaki from being recaptured by her own (very messed up) family, she never expected to keep her safe from them forever. Instead, her plan was to "poison the prize": by letting Murasaki experience enough of the outside world while living with Shinkurou, she would hopefully return to the Kuhouin family with the knowledge and willpower to bring down the family's traditions from the inside.
- Gunnm: Caerula Sanguis applies a Batman Gambit in a rather unorthodox way: one-on-one battle. In Volume 6 of the Last Order storyline, after a token unarmed exchange with Alita and a cloud of throwing knives, she announces a special technique called the Eight-Block Death Gate Array. In the beginning, it looks merely like a fast combination of sword strikes. However, this is only the beginning of the ruse. The Array is actually not a technique or even a combination, but a tactic custom-tailored to every single enemy she meets. By using her 700 years of combat experience and her ability to sense neural pulse flow and thus infer the intentions and thoughts of her opponents, she takes the terrain as well as the opponent's capabilities, reflexes, and even their personalities all into account, shaping the match such that all her opponent's actions, both conscious and unconscious, lead them inexorably to a location where they will be completely helpless against her full attack. She is apparently good enough that she can suss this out completely within the first few seconds of any given fight. The only ways to defeat the Array in a duel are to be completely certain you are doing one thing while doing something completely different (such as freezing when every cell in your body is yelling for you to run), or by completely banishing one's ingrained reflexes, becoming completely aware of the self and the world, and thus able to make true choices.
- Jinnai, the Smug Snake of El Hazard The Magnificent World, makes a bid for Magnificent Bastardy with this one: There's a Forgotten Superweapon that could help his Bugrom allies win their war, but only the good-aligned Priestesses of Mt. Muldoon know where it's hidden away. So he orders the Bugrom fleet to set sail. The heroes, thinking Jinnai knows where it is, panic and sail off with the priestesses leading the way... and Jinnai simply follows them to the right island.
- Aeolia Schenberg's feats in Gundam00 are oft barely noticed. In spite of living 200 years before the events of the anime, he managed to lay down a framework for Celestial Being and created an A.I. that would be able to create missions and postulate possible strategies for the group to carry out. Not only that, he theorized and developed technologies that were to come to be centuries beyond his time, including the Twin Drive for the Gundam 00 (and the solar furnaces themselves for that matter) and the orbital elevators. Although he planned to go into cryogenic sleep and wake up in the future, he also planned for his death. He made sure that if he was ever killed, the Trans-Am system would be activated in all Gundams, as well as making other information stored outside of Veda accessible (like the aforementioned Twin Drive). Aeolia's surprise 200-year old plans often manage to foil Ribbons's, the resident Magnificent Bastard, own machinations, to which he frequently expresses frustration at. After all, he thought he was just carrying out Aeolia's wishes too.
- Federation soldier Hank Hercules initiates a coup de'tat and seizes control of the Africa Tower elevator's low orbital station, counting on a lethal response from the A-LAWS that will illuminate the citizens into their brutal ways. However, the A-LAWS use the incident to facilitate their own Gambit, using their information control to frame the mutineers for the A-LAWS' ruthless attack on the citizens and the destruction of the tower itself, all to completely discredit the mutineers and their anti-government allies, while giving the A-LAWS a pretext to consolidate the full might of the Federation army under their banner.
- Though this turns out to have fatal consequences later on, as some of the more important members of A-LAWS make a Heel Face Turn in response.
- Xellos does this all the time in Slayers, which is not particularly difficult, as everyone in that series is extremely predictable. Usually, whatever he does serves his plans in some way, but a lot of the time he just manipulates them because he thinks it's funny. It generally is.
- Shikamaru Nara from Naruto won most of his early major battles by using Batman Gambits to manipulate his opponents into just the right spot such that he can either catch their shadows or force them to harm themselves through use of this otherwise harmless technique.
- Deidara also pulls one to capture Gaara: he realizes the sand Gaara is attacking with is the one he has the most control over, so when Gaara rips Deidara's arm off he has the living clay inside said arm crawl inside this sand. He then sends a huge bomb towards the Sand Village so Gaara has to send most of his sand to withhold the blast, forcing Gaara to block his next attack with his best sand, has the clay he left inside that sand crawling into the center of Gaara's sand sheld, then detonates them.
- Fullmetal Alchemist manga and Brotherhood — Father's entire plan coming to fruition rests on the fact that he and the homunculi knew that the sacrifices would never back down and leave the country.
- Dr. Marcoh also pulls one in the manga and Brotherhood when he springs a trap on Envy by having Reverse Mole Zanpano call him and give him Marcoh's location. Marcoh knew Envy was so cruel and ruthless that he would personally come down to screw with him even more.
- In Dragon Ball Z, Vegito pulls this off on Majin Buu. It seems that Vegito can beat Buu at any time, but is just toying with him, while the Kais are asking why he just doesn't Get It Over With. Turns out Vegito is purposely making Buu angry enough to get desperate, which is when Buu starts absorbing people. Vegito allows himself to get absorbed on purpose so he can rescue Gohan, Trunks, Goten, and Piccolo, who were absorbed earlier.
- He clearly gets this from Vegeta, who also pulls a couple Batman Gambits throughout the series. In the Namek saga he steals all of Freeza's dragon balls while both Freeza and Zarbon are in the same ship as he is, by fooling them into thinking he'd already left the ship.
- Akiyama Shinichi of Liar Game uses this trope pretty much continuously. I mean, just look at the way he plays on Fujisawa's anxiety in the first round through constant surveillance, panicking Fujisawa enough for him to believe that Akiyama was the LGT representative arriving to collect the 100 million yen. Yes, Fujiyama handed his money to his opponent after guarding it so intensely for 30 days.
- A bigger example of this can be found during the musical chairs arc, in which Akiyama predicts and manipulates the extras, a traitorous teammate, as well as the enemy teams into making a 'trash medal' player win in the end. Had anyone gotten suspicious at any point, had the enemy team decided to sacrifice the trash medal player early, or had the team in particular he'd gathered the medals for lost out to the other, it would have all fallen apart, making it a wonderful example of this trope.
- Both Marik and Dark Bakura in Yu-Gi-Oh! tend to operate this way. One notable example is Dark Bakura's duel with Yami during the Battle City finals. When Yami secures certain victory by playing his god card, Marik's gambit to to release Bakura from Dark Bakura's control, and thus force Yami to lose the duel in order to protect his critically ill friend's life, has two flaws in it. The first is that Marik didn't expect Dark Bakura to protect Bakura by re-possessing him. The second — and one which everyone seems to overlook — is that Yami could simply ask Bakura to forfeit the duel.
- For that matter, most of the card game duels played in this series operate on Batman Gambits. Duelists continually bluff and trick their opponents into helping them set up an elaborate ploy that will secure them certain victory, unless their opponent then spots the tiny but fatal flaw, or just draws the right card out of dumb luck.
- One of the reasons that Yami Yugi is never really beaten is because he always seems to remain two steps ahead of his opponents...even when they are two steps ahead of him. For the matter, one can probably rename it "Yami Yugi Syndrome".
- Eda in Black Lagoon has a very crude (but effective and hilarious) one set up that she uses to bushwhack "Greenback" Jane. Even the other characters think the plan is stupid.
- Hansel and Gretel managed to divert the majority of the hired guns out for their bounty with one of these. Step #1: get a car with tinted windows so no one can see who's inside. Step #2: Bribe two local orphans to pose as you by putting on your clothes and wigs similar to your hair, then get them in the car and have them drive off. Step #3: Laugh as the stupid bounty hunters blow the car to smithereens and realize how they've been had by two little kids.
- Rock attempts one that would bring Ronapour to the world's attention in the "Roberta's Blood Trail" Arc by manipulating or predicting the actions of just about everyone in the city. And he would would have gotten away with it too, if he'd known about the undercover CIA agent that he practically told his entire plan to.
- Though he frequently makes use of the Indy Ploy to succeed, the titular character of Ranma ˝ is not adverse to a good Batman Gambit, particularly in the manga. Though they do usually fail and force him to revert to Indy Ploy, that's because Ranma Saotome's "friends" and enemies are extremely unpredictable, and so prone to reacting in ways other then what he expected. The best example would be the first Pantyhose Taro story, where he sets up an elaborate plan intended to convince Dirty Old Man and Jerk Ass Happosai to rename Taro by giving him a faked dream sequence in which Happosai sees a future in which Taro has, due to his name, become a terrible Panty Thief, and is then sent back to the day he named Taro. Ranma expects Happosai to choose to give Taro a new name. Instead, Happosai proves his Chaotic Evil credentials by promptly trying to murder what he thinks is baby Taro with his bomb attacks.
- In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, the heroes pull one of these to prevent the villains from getting a MacGuffin (by taking it out of its suitcase and hiding it under Caro's hat).
- In Trigun, Vash wins most of his battles by quickly and carefully studying his opponent's personality and mannerisms to predict how the opponent will act and move.
- In Katekyo Hitman Reborn!, Tsuna, or at least his future self from ten year's time, pulls this off to the exteme in order to save multiple universes from the arc's BigBad Byakuran. But mainly for training himself and his family up.
- In the anime only Zanpakuto Rebellion arc of Bleach, Muramasa only lets slip his location and separating Ichigo from the rest of the shinigami and luring him into attacking him using Getsuga Tenshou for the purpose of deflecting it onto the barrier containing Captain-Commander Yamamoto to break it. Muramasa's whole gambit hinges on Ichigo using the full powered Getsuga Tenshou without figuring out that the barrier wasn't keeping Yamamoto in, but keeping Muramasa out. Any other Shinigami might have figured this out sooner.
- In the manga Aizen pulls a pretty simple one in the Hueco Mundo arc. He kidnaps Orihime, under the pretense that she wants her power, which causes Soul Society to temporarily abandon her because they think she defected. However, when Ichigo's team go to rescue her alone and inevitably get their asses kicked, Soul Society sends four captains and lieutenants to bail them out, at which point Aizen shuts the door behind them, leaving them locked in Hueco Mundo and unable to help while he goes to fight the remaining shinigami, who have lost a significant amount of their strength.
- In School Mermaid, the one pulling the strings is Haruko, who deliberately brought the unconfident, nonathletic Yoshiko to hunt mermaids while ensuring she wouldn't find out the consequences of failure until it was too late: being transformed into a mermaid herself. Turns out she needed a mermaid whose name started with the same letter in order to make her crush fall under its spell... Guess who qualifies.
- In Pokémon Special, Fantina has a pretty good one set up as her Gym gimmick. First, the challenger has to solve some difficult but straight forward math questions to reach her, forcing the challenger to adapt a logical way of thinking. When the challenger actually reaches her, her Pokemon's illusions kick in, totally destroying all that built up logic and with it the trainer's brain. If a less logical person were to reach her (presumably just by defeating all the Gym Trainers instead of answering the questions), he would just be caught up in the illusion and not realize he's getting the crap beaten out of him.
- In One Piece, Blackbeard successfully defeats and captures Ace and hands him over to the Marines, earning him the title of Warlord of the Sea. Knowing Whitebeard's familial protectiveness, a chain of events would led up to a war between the Whitebeard Pirates and the Marines at Marineford, which gave him a clear opening to break into Impel Down and recruit the most dangerous and powerful prisoners into his crew.
- In Revolutionary Girl Utena, most of Touga (and by extension, Akio) and Mikage's plans to obtain the Rose Bride rely on these. In particular, there's Episode 11 (counting on the fact that Utena would prioritize her feelings for Dios over her desire to emulate him, costing her the duel), all of the Black Rose Duelist arc (Mikage sets up emotional catastrophes in the lives of students so they'll enter his seminar), and Episode 38 (which relied on Utena prioritizing Anthy over Akio...not only setting her up for a stab in the back, but cementing her as a prince who can be used to open the Rose Gate.)
- Episode 9 of Puella Magi Madoka Magica has a spectacular one pulled by Kyuubey on Kyoko and Homura. Anticipating that Kyoko's re-emerging heroic tendencies will lead her to try and change Sayaka back from witch form, he vaguely implies that Madoka could use The Power of Friendship to do so (and of course, Kyoko would need to accompany her for protection). Of course, it was an impossible prospect from the start, and not only does Kyoko pull a Heroic Sacrifice to defeat the witch and save Madoka, but it leaves Homura with no other Puella Magi to help her battle the upcoming Walpurgisnacht - which practically forces the incredibly self-sacrificing Madoka to make a contract, guaranteeing her transformation into a witch that will destroy the world and provide Kyuubey with endless amounts of energy.
- It backfires spectacularly in the final episode, when Madoka pulls a gambit of her own against him. While Madoka does indeed make a contract with Kyuubei, the terms of said contract are that witches never exist in the first place. The end result? Madoka becomes a Magical Girl goddess and changes the universe so that Kyuubei has to rely on a much less efficient form of energy, along with altering the little bastard's memory so that he doesn't even know what a "witch" is. Oh, and she binds him to the new system so he won't be evil anymore.
- Keima Katsuragi of The World God Only Knows enacts these regularly, thanks in no small part to his (Dangerous) Genre Savvy, using his knowledge to capture runaway spirits, goddesses and subversive demons. Most recently, he had Fiore out herself as Vintage's agent and recaptured her several chapters later after she gets away from Haqua and Nora.
- Kotetsu pulls off a good one in episode 13 of Tiger & Bunny to get around Jake's mind reading powers. Since he's a bit of an Idiot Hero, it even fools the audience at first.
- Hajime in The Kindaichi Case Files does this a lot in order to corner a suspect or find out details that would normally be overlooked including but not limited to: rigging watches, lying about lost items and faking deaths.
- In Eyeshield 21, Hiruma, for most of the time, always had some plans that enables him to pull a comeback move from dire straits for his team. Some of his plans often seem ridiculous or just plain batshit insane, but it works most of the time.
- A meta-example in Mahou Sensei Negima! would be author Ken Akamatsu's plot to essentially write an over the top Shounen action series when his publishers wanted a Harem Series by hiding the action-y elements.
- Ouran High School Host Club has its Darkest Hour as a result of this: Tamaki's Evil Matriarch grandmother is currently using such gambits to separate him and Haruhi, thus revealing herself to be the series' true villain.
- Windaria: Lagado turns Alan into his Unwitting Pawn by exploiting his desire to protect The Valley. If Alan said 'We're moving' instead, the plan would have collapsed then and there.
- Inukami!: One episode featured the inukami plotting to take advantage of Keita's perverted tendencies, sure their plan would work immediately. Except he showed restraint, foiling their plan.
- Yawara! A Fashionable Judo Girl: Jigorou has proven to be quite good at these especially when it comes to manipulating his granddaughter Yawara.
Comics
Fan Works
- Bluepencil's Neon Genesis Evangelion fic Shinji and Warhammer 40k is full of both gambits and roulettes. Made even better by the fact that neither Gendo or SEELE are willing to admit the possibility that neither is manipulating Shinji. Let alone the fact that he's manipulating both them, and the Japanese government against each other.
- In another NGE fic, Neon Exodus Evangelion, Lucifer (also known as Unit 01) absorbs DJ after the final battle in the series, then stays passive afterward so he can be piloted by one of Natlateth's cloned pilots. Asuka almost screws this up by breaking into the SEELE-controlled Geofront and starting Lucifer up to try and talk to DJ, but manages to avoid it by taking over his body directly and piloting him like a production-model Eva. The culmination of the plan is DJ taking over in the middle of the final combat, so Natlateth stabs Lucifer with the Lance of Longinus. Since DJ is Longinus, and Lucifer became Unit 01 after sustaining wounds by the same Lance while trying to redeem himself, the outcome is that the Redemption is finished. If Natlateth hadn't thought Lucifer was truly dead and had left him at the Geofront, the plan would have failed.
- The Battle Royale fanfiction Seventy Two Hours has Damien systematically annihilate the cheerleaders (the Brat Pack) by exploiting their mutual distrust for one another. By breaking into their compound and escaping unseen, he's easily able to cause the simmering tension in the group to boil over. Within a couple of hours, every one of them is dead, and they've even disposed of his redundant lackey for him in the process.
- Forward has a couple of these, the first being one hatched by River and Jayne while being held captive by Niska, which allows them to break free by convincing Niska to kill one of his goons and Jayne palming a weapon from his body. Later on, River uses one to convince the rest of the crew that she's dangerously unstable, so they leave her behind while going on a job, during which she is able to sneak away and do a job on the side.
- In Kyon: Big Damn Hero, when Kyon, Koizumi, Yuki and Mikuru go to see the Student Council President:
Kyon: Haruhi's going to burst into the middle of the meeting and be really pissed off about not being involved.
Koizumi: Ah... You're certain?
Kyon: She absolutely will if you send a text to her just before we enter the Student Council room. That should give Kimidori-san enough time to state her goals and reasons, but not to actually do anything before Haruhi shows up.
- The Villain Protagonist Tyrin Lieph (in the Mass Effect fanfic The Council Era) successfully predicts exactly how the Council will respond to his son's death, how the dezba will respond to a dezban high chieftain's execution, and how the public will respond to the dezba's reaction in order to massacre the dezba, who he perceives to be a threat to galactic security.
- In Survivor: Fan Characters, Vinnie from Season 2 and 6 is exceptionally well-known for pulling these off, often getting his enemies voted off easily without fail. From Season 5, Gatemaster is also adept at these, although his relies on luck a lot more, and he uses one to get the final four he wants.
- Subverted in the case of Phil from Season 7: he tries to pull one off a la Richard Hatch from Survivor: Borneo, when he quits the final immunity challenge on the assumption that whoever won would take him to the finals with them, and it fails spectacularly when Ker votes him off and takes Wrecker instead.
- In With Strings Attached, the four manage to prevail thanks to a series of Batman Gambits that take advantage of the desperation and boredom of the skahs and the paranoia of the Raleka, as well as Brox's overconfidence.
Films — Animation
- Aladdin pulls off a successful gambit against Genie, showing that he was clever enough to not get overwhelmed by the Genie's antics. By challenging Genie's "phenomenal cosmic power", Aladdin was able to escape the Cave of Wonders without using up one of his precious few wishes.
- Aladdin pulls this off again in the finale, where he tricks the power-mad Jafar into using his final wish to become "an all-powerful genie". Jafar not only gets his "phenomenal cosmic power", but also the "itty-bitty living space" that goes with it: he is imprisoned in his very own lamp.
- At the end of A Bug's Life, Flik pulls one off on Hopper by claiming that the real bird they just saw was "another one of [his] little bird tricks". Hopper falls for it and promptly gets his ass handed to him on a silver platter in one of the most karmic Disney Villain Deaths EVER as Flik and Atta watch from a safe distance.
- In The Lion King, Scar pulls a fairly sadistic one on Mufasa when he puts Simba in danger. It ends up getting Mufasa killed.
- Nocturna's Moka spends the whole movie working on one. Aside from his insatiable coffee habit, literally every action he takes, down to the last breath, is calculated to put Tim in a situation where his only option is to overcome his fear of the dark, which will save the night from certain doom.
- In The Hunchback of Notre Dame Frollo tells Quasimodo that he has troops ready to capture Esmeralda at the Court of Miracles. Quasimodo and Phoebus go to warn her first. Frollo is there as well; he didn't know where the court was but knew they would lead him to it.
Films — Live Action
Literature
- The absolute master in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms saga is The Strategist Zhuge Liang, though he's also rivaled by fellow chessmasters Sima Yi, Zhou Yu and Pang Tong. One could argue pseudo-villain Cao "That's exactly what I was thinking!" Cao also has his moments of Batman inspiration.
- And as for the classic example: the "Empty Fortress" strategy employed in the novel by Zhuge Liang when he had to defend a fort against Sima Yi: Zhuge Liang simply opened the gates and played a zither on the wall. Naturally, Sima Yi suspected a trap and retreated, because... Oh, come on, it's Zhuge Freaking Liang! He's got to have a trap somewhere! The fortress really was empty, and it only worked because Zhuge Liang knew that Sima Yi would be naturally suspicious of him.
- Another incident is where Cao Cao is escaping from the Battle of Red Cliffs, and has to choose between a wider path and a narrow one, with smoke trails coming from the latter. Cao Cao chooses the obviously trap-laden narrow path. His logic? It's one of Zhuge Liang's tricks to keep him on the wide one. He's almost right: Zhuge Liang, knowing that Cao Cao would use that line of reasoning, had set the ambush up on the narrow path.
- If the traditional tales are to be believed, Zhuge Liang goes so far as to do this to people on his side, including his lord Liu Bei's sworn brother, Zhang Fei. The legend goes that Zhang Fei believed that Liu Bei treated Zhuge Liang, an untested scholar, far too well above his own veteran generals. Zhuge Liang, hearing of this, asked Zhang Fei what could be done to prove himself. Zhang Fei, due to go to a city on business for a day, insisted that Zhuge Liang would be smart enough to predict his next three meals or be dismissed from Liu Bei's service. Zhuge Liang agreed, wrote down his prediction on the spot, and sealed it in a bag, given to Zhang Fei's sworn brother Guan Yu. Zhang Fei went on his task, and upon entering the city, thought that Zhuge Liang would know of his habit for meat and wine, and avoided it, instead eating a local childhood favorite of his, green onions wrapped in fried dough. The next day, he realized that Zhuge Liang would know where he had been raised and what he would have eaten in his youth, and decided to try and fool the strategist by wrapping the fried dough inside the onions instead. Concluding his business, dinner time came and while he was hungry, Zhang Fei again thought of the wager, and Zhuge Liang's cunning. Certain that he could win, he rushed back to Liu Bei's camp, where he found a feast waiting for his return, organized by Zhuge Liang. Zhang Fei tried to claim he'd already eaten, but Zhuge Liang asked Guan Yu to read the prediction.
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. If Zhang Fei hadn't overthought it, or just been The Alcoholic Big Eater like usual, he would have won the bet easily.
- Cao Cao gets one himself at Wuchao granaries. First, Cao Cao undertakes the mother of all False Flag Operations and burns down the food supplies of his rival, Yuan Shao. Yuan Shao responds by reasoning that Cao Cao will have focused everything on the raid, and that his main camp will be weak. So he sends out a force to take out Cao Cao's main camp and cut off the retreat of the raiding force, including Cao Cao himself. At this point, news reaches him that the defending garrison was victorious, and he adds the forces that were meant to reinforce it to the attack on Cao Cao's main camp. This was all according to Cao Cao's plan. The garrison had not held out: the messengers that told Yuan Shao that were Cao soldiers dressed in the stolen uniforms. Cao wanted the force attacking his main camp to be as large as possible: he had an ambush waiting for them and wanted to get as many enemies as possible. Two of Yuan Shao's best generals were forced to surrender when they were completely cut off from their leader.
- In Double, Double / The Case of the Seven Murders, part of the villain's plan depends on the detective identifying the pattern and convincing victim #5 he will be next, adding a number of omens to further frighten the superstitious victim, so that he would make out his will to the killer. Subverted in that the killer overdoes it, the victim changes his will again, then everything spirals out of control as another person figures things out, necessitating two more murders.
- Cathy in East of Eden has a gift for seeing people's weaknesses and the sociopathy needed to manipulate them. It's a repeated theme through the book that she'll mention an idea, it will spread and become other people's beliefs, but no one will remember it originated from her. (Ex:'s The ministed who committed suicide had trouble in Boston, they should jar their own fruits at the whorehouse, etc.)
- The plan to capture David in Animorphs relies entirely on him behaving the way they expect, as well as him not realizing that Tobias is still alive. At various points, he could have broken character and foiled the plan, but he never does. Marco later attempts this in order to thwart the two Vissers, but this one doesn't go quite as well.
- In Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, Hari Seldon basically sets up centuries worth of Batman Gambit in advance, using statistics. Somewhat subverted when it turns out that he actually left behind a secret Second Foundation to keep history working precisely according to his plan.
- And of course in Second Foundation the eponymous organization pulls off one themselves when they trick the First Foundationers into believing the Second Foundation is on Terminus rather than Trantor.
- And in the various prequels/sequels it's revealed that the whole thing... including the 10,000 year old Galactic Empire itself... was a millennia-long Batman Gambit by Robot Daneel Olivaw designed to ensure that he could remain operative to protect humanity as a whole.
- Steven Brust's Jhereg has an unusual take on this; the villain sets up a careful scheme designed to get the protagonist to kill him, under circumstances which will start a bloody war between two noble houses he hates.
- Considering that Dragaera has an entire Great House of Xanatos Gambitters in the Yendi, this also gets used in several other books. Particularly notable are Yendi itself, where the Sorceress in Green and Sethra the Younger have been screwing with the internal politics of House Dragon to make sure the latter becomes Warlord when the new Emperor/Empress takes over, and Phoenix, where the Goddess Verra uses Vlad in a plot to try to calm the Teckla uprisings by starting a war with another country to get them to unite against a common enemy. The latter didn't work out very well.
- Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan usually starts out with one of these, then rapidly devolves into Indy Ploys. What makes him good is his amazing ability to convince people that he meant to do that.
- Miles' protege, Elli Quinn, in a "What would Miles do?" moment says: "Never do yourself, what you can con an expert into doing for you."
- There are a number of examples of Batman Gambits within Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game and its sequels. Most of these are done by the protagonists, though one antagonist, Achilles, becomes well known for these. In the final battle of Ender's Game, Ender makes use of the enemy's dual expectations, that no one would ever kill a queen and that humans are rational and will try to survive any battle, as well as the fact that the enemy is distracted trying to manage all of its ships, in order to slip some fighters in close to the planet and destroy both it and the enemy fleets in a single blow. This is a fairly convoluted set of circumstances, all of which are needed for the plan to work, and so it does come near being a Gambit Roulette.
- Subverted at the end of Shadow Puppets: the super-intelligent Bean correctly intuits that Achilles has him marked down for a Batman Gambit, and asks himself what he (Bean) wouldn't be likely to do. The answer: ignore every negotiating ploy of Achilles's, walk up to him, and pop a cap in him — which he does.
- G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown story The Sins of Prince Saradine: Saradine has two enemies, one a blackmailer, and the other seeking revenge. He then gives everything he has to the blackmailer, and informs the other of his location. The avenger kills the blackmailer and willingly accepts execution.
- Stephen Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant are almost entirely guided by Lord Foul the Despiser. For example, the first book, Lord Foul's Bane, involves a band of heroes fighting and defeating a mad sorcerer... thus allowing Foul to acquire a powerful artifact that the sorcerer had been guarding.
- The Chronicles are littered with Batman gambits. The above by Lord Foul the Despiser; Thomas Covenant's plan to give Lord Foul his ring, and thus the power to destroy everything and free himself, Covenant gambling on the assumption that Foul would kill him with it first, and thus leave Covenant in a position to absorb any attack it made on the Arch of Time with his own soul....
- Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes often uses small-scale Batman Gambits to trap criminals or get information he requires. In the course of the stories, he does everything from plant false reports in the media, to put on disguises, to fake his own death, twice, in order to solve the various cases he handles. He's even gone so far as to lie to and manipulate Watson and his clients if necessary, although usually not in a way that puts them in danger.
- Backfired in A Scandal in Bohemia when Irene Adler figured out what he had done and who he was.
- Many of his deductions are a sort of retroactive Batman Gambit: after the fact, he deduces the "only possible way" that characters could have acted and events could have played out. Any number of alternate possibilities always exist, but are never acknowledged.
- In Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers, Milady de Winter's ability to pull off Batman Gambits is what makes her formidable — if she's unable to carry out an assassination she can just get someone else to do it for her. Cardinal Richelieu is the story's Xanatos Gambit specialist.
- Speaking of Dumas, can we say The Count of Monte Cristo? Oh, yes we can. Dantes got imprisoned due to this trope, and after his escape, he lives and breathes it for the remainder of the book.
- And it is certainly a series of these gambits and not the other kind since we also get to see several of his gambits run out of control and almost destroy some innocents he wasn't aiming at and had to protect. Resulting in a near breakdown and loss of faith at the end of the book and realizing that he really isn't Providence. Fortunately, his loyal Greek Princess bails him out with a love admission.
- Everything that happens in Neil Gaiman's American Gods from the first page onwards turns out to have been staged by the gods Loki and Odin — a.k.a. Low Key Lyesmith and Mr. Wednesday — right up to, and including, the war between the old and new gods.
- In Artemis Fowl, the title character ends his encounter with the LEPrecon with a Batman Gambit, using the regulations of the organization to maneuver everything into place for his escape, though he kindly leaves some of the money behind.
- Or perhaps he had another reason for returning some of the gold...
- The subsequent books continue the pattern of Artemis manipulating the hell out of everyone and everything to further his goals. Subsequent books have had other characters trying to run Xanatos Gambits against him, but Artemis has generally accounted for these possibilities. Unusually, unlike many portrayals of gambits, we get to see at least a small fraction of what goes into making them and how Artemis essentially plans for multiple possibilities. When plan A fails he'll revert to plan B and the reader will actually be told that's what's happening rather than being led to believe that Artemis is just omniscient. This portrayal, plus the fact that the success of these plans still owes a good deal to luck and assistance from friends is what keeps the later books out of the realm of Gambit Roulette.
- Nearly everything that comes out of the Bene Gesserit from Frank Herbert's Dune, either on an individual or a planetary level, is some form of Batman Gambit, but the Baron Harkonnen proves just as capable of executing one of his own; the course of action that the Duke Leto took to gain Arrakis, which eventually killed him, was the result of the Baron's successful Batman Gambit against him.
- The Bene Gesserit also throw in a heaping helpful of Crazy Prepared. They set up the Missionaria Protectiva to seed planets with a specific belief system, so that if necessary a Bene Gessirt could use the myths and prophecies to set up their own Batman Gambit as needed.
- And the Baron's plan only worked because Yueh was executing his own Batman Gambit, knowing the Baron would want to gloat over the Duke's capture gave him the opportunity to equip the Duke with a tool to assassinate the Baron. Plans within plans indeed.
- In Jamie Malanowski's The Coup, a US Vice-President engineers one of the most brilliant government ousters ever seen. He plays everybody like cards in a deck and does it with such panache that you find yourself cheering for the Magnificent Bastard.
- Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel and its sequels are loaded with these, as Chauvelin uses the tactic (as an attempted Xanatos Gambit) and the title character responds. The entire ending scheme in the original The Scarlet Pimpernel relies on the French buying into their own anti-Semitic tendencies; this is usually dropped from adaptations, such as the musical.
- K.J. Parker's Engineer trilogy is one big gambit by the title figure, who manipulates nations just so he can go home to his wife and child. Arguably a Gambit Roulette, except that he made use of luck, but could have gotten by without it; "it'd have taken longer and needed a lot more effort, but [he] would have got there in the end."
- K.J. Parker's Scavenger Trilogy: Ciartan's war on the crows, which is symbolic of the several deep conspiracies which depend on getting inside the head of the enemy.
- Terry Pratchett's Discworld: Vetinari. As Moist reflects: "It was bad enough being a puppet, but then he arranges it so you pull your own strings."
- In Guards! Guards!, Vetinari specifically set up the deepest, darkest dungeon in his palace so that when he was inevitably thrown in there he'd be in perfect security. The locks are on the inside...
- Vetinari seems to mix these with Xanatos Gambits. It's just about impossible to tell which type of gambit he's using in any given situation.
- In Men at Arms, Vetinari seemingly gives into the demands of the Assassins' and Fools' Guilds by forbidding Vimes from investigating the theft and the string of murders that followed, but he knows full well that doing so will only cause Vimes to redouble his efforts. It briefly backfires on him when he tells Vimes to turn in his badge — in the middle of a conversation with someone else, he realizes he likely broke Vimes' spirit instead of galvanizing it, because Vimes didn't put his fist in the wall after leaving.
- Vimes, too, particularly in Night Watch. At one point he wonders whether Vetinari "felt this way all the time".
- Unlike Vetinari, Vimes actually did know the future. Less of a Batman Gambit, more of a Reverse Cassandra.
- Lord Rust, in Jingo!, illustrates how spectacularly this can go wrong.
- Death pulls this a few times with his granddaughter Susan. Usually because she can go places and do things that he cannot. See Hogfather and Thief of Time for examples.
- Minor characters also invoke this trope, as when Glod Glodson from Soul Music needs to speak to the Librarian, and asks some student wizards where "the monkey" is. In hope of seeing Glod pounded into pulp, they lead him there directly, encouraging him to act like a monkey when they get there. Instead, Glod respectfully tells the Librarian that the students just called him a monkey. And muses to himself that they'd have told him to push off if he'd asked about an ape.
- Could actually qualify as a Xanatos Gambit, as helpful students would've corrected Glod's use of "monkey" to begin with, while the pranksters' response played into his trick.
- Duke Edmund Talbot's battle strategies in John Ringo's Council Wars series tend to involve this, combined with never telling anyone, even his closest aides and allies, his plans makes it nigh-impossible for his enemies to predict his actions. Which is the whole point.
- In J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter saga, Batman Gambits are used many times:
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Riddle attacked four students, including one of Harry's best friends, and then kidnapped his best friend's little sister and future Love Interest Ginny Weasley to make Harry go into the Chamber, because he wanted to meet the boy who had defeated his future self, and talk to him. Oh, and kill him too.
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: when Voldemort arranged for Harry to compete in the Triwizard Tournament, what he wanted was not to get him killed in the process, as everyone thought. He wanted Harry to survive all the tasks and win the Tournament, so he could kidnap him and use his blood to regenerate his body. There's also one Batman Gambit that fails: fake-Moody surreptitiously gives Neville the information Harry will need to pass the Second Task, assuming that Harry will ask help from everyone. However, Harry doesn't, so fake-Moody has to find another way of making that information reach Harry.
- Not in the movie, where Neville willingly gives the info to Harry. (Because not only it shortens the plot, but makes Dobby's presence even less necessary.)
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Voldemort creates a false vision to trick Harry into believing he has Sirius trapped in the Hall of Prophecy, correctly guessing Harry would go to rescue him, finding the Prophecy instead, which Voldemort's Death Eaters could then steal. Previously, however, there is another failed attempt: Voldemort first just shows Harry where the Prophecy is, believing his curiosity would make him go and get it, but Harry actually doesn't know anything about it, so he doesn't even know what he's seeing.
- Harry himself pulls off one of these in Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince: when Ron is having self-esteem problems that get in the way of his Quidditch performance before the first match of the year, Harry makes Hermione and (with her unknowing help) Ron believe that he spiked his pumpkin juice with luck potion, just by trying to "hide" the little bottle, and pointing out some lucky coincidences. Ron, believing that nothing can go wrong that day, plays spectacularly, and then Harry reveals that he did it all by himself. However, it leads to a row between Ron and Hermione that Harry didn't foresee.
- Basically everything Dumbledore does is part of two huge Batman Gambits: one of these, training Harry and keeping him alive "so that he can die at the right moment" is successful. The other one — luckily — fails: 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".
- Kelsier and his crew of Mistborn pulled off a terrific Batman Gambit. First, they tricked the noble houses of the main city of Luthadel into fighting each other so that they wouldn't be able to mount a unified defense against rebel forces. Then, Kelsier visits people throughout the city, establishing emotional connections to them, and building his image of a larger than life hero. To reinforce his legend, he mixes in tales of a legendary magical material, which he purports will allow to him to slay the Lord Ruler. To further reinforce this, Kelsier uses his magic to empower a common soldier. In secret, Kelsier gathers arms and armor for those in the city. Finally, when the army is distracted with the rebel army, thus drawing them away from the city, Kelsier produces a public spectacle in the city square and is promptly killed. But, you see, his death was part of the plan. Spurred by the death of their favored hero, the commoners of Luthadel rise up and depose the authorities, thus allowing the main heroine the opportunity needed to take out the Big Bad. Which she does.
- And that's just the first book in the trilogy. The second two continue on in this tradition.
- Bram Stoker's original novel Dracula, where the Count's master plan to infiltrate England and spread his vampire curse was only foiled by the Deus ex Machina of asylum doctor John Seward just happening to be the former student of 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 counter-Xanatos of hypnotising her to deduce the Count's location.
- J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: as explained on the What an Idiot 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.
- This becomes the basis of the free people's entire strategy after Pippin looks into the palantir, premised entirely on the assumption that 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 The Silmarillion. In it, the Numenoreans (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 Numenoreans into attacking Valinor so Sauron could watch them die spectacularly. He didn't anticipate that the Valar would lay down their power before Iluvatar (God), and ask him for aid. Iluvatar made the world round, made Valinor inaccessible except to certain individuals (namely the elves), and sunk Numenor 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.
- Your Mileage May Vary on whether it failed — 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 Nazgul (he was less successful with the elves and dwarves), using the Numenorian's fears of death and resentment of elven and Valar immortality to goad the Numenorians into a suicidal assault on Valinor, using Saruman and Denethor's desire to scry his plans via the palantir to push both past the Despair Event Horizon, driving Saruman into a Face Heel Turn. He doesn't always get it right, but Sauron's frighteningly good at playing his enemies like violins. It's only when he's beaten at his own game by Gandalf and Aragorn that he's finally defeated.
- Nobody does it like Jeeves. He plays a blinder at the end of Right Ho, Jeeves, persuading Bertie to creep out at night and ring the fire bell, so that in the ensuing panic Tuppy Glossop's first instinct will be to rescue Angela Travers, and Gussie Fink-Nottle's to rescue Madeleine Basset, thereby rekindling their love. Jeeves's real plan is darker: he knows that the party will be unable to get back into the house, that the smouldering Aunt Dahlia will order Bertie to bicycle nine miles to fetch the key, that it will be their mutual exasperation with Bertie that will reunite the lovers ... and, finally, that this will be the ideal time for him to 'accidentally' burn Bertie's unsuitable mess jacket while ironing it. Head and shoulders, he stands above the rest.
- In Timothy Zahn's Star Wars Expanded Universe books, this is the essence of most of Grand Admiral Thrawn's strategies - he's very, very good at predicting his enemies. He can work out what species is leading an attack from the way they fly, and target his counterattack against their cultural or genetic blind spots. He sets up a power struggle within the New Republic just by understanding Bothan psychology. And he is able to understand the psychology of any species simply by studying their art. For all intents and purposes, he's basically Sherlock Holmes, military commander In Space! He's also the only villain in the Expanded Universe to anticipate the heroes' Crazy Enough to Work tendencies - when the New Republic is given the choice between attacking a moderately defended Imperial planet and one of the Empire's biggest military bases, and gives every indication that they intend to attack the former, he predicts they'll attack the latter because they're used to doing crazy things the enemy won't expect. He's right. Everyone on the New Republic side is shocked.
- Outbound Flight. 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 causes one of the Corellians to fear that they are hostages. The Corellian steals a shuttle, unwittingly taking some Trade Federation battle droids, and flees into Vagaari hands. The Vagaari are pleased with the droids, lock the Corellian into Human Shield position with the other captives on the outsides of their ships, and head directly towards the Chiss base. They are brought out of hyperspace by the stolen gravity generator, which is already being used to pin down Outbound Flight. The Jedi on Outbound Flight get immediately threatened by the Vagaari, so they do a mind-whammy on them, carefully not touching the captives. The droids inside of the ship shoot the Vagaari high command, knocking out the Jedi who are in mental contact with them, while the droid starfighters buzz the ships, firing between the captives.
- Another Timothy Zahn example comes from The Icarus Hunt. Pilot Jordan McKell pulls off a pair to out a murderer and pull off a spectacular Undercover Cop Reveal.
- This is done in the later Honor Harrington 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.
- This is basically how Gabriel Lafayette and Easy Mather's scheme works in Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks, and, according to the book, how psychics in general work, albeit on a far less grandiose scale.
- Depending on how you interpret it (and there are more than a few ways to do so), the plot of Milton's Paradise Lost could be one of these, designed to give humankind the knowledge of good and evil, knowing that Satan would try to mess thing up by doing the opposite of whatever he thought God intended.
- In Juliet Marillier's Heir to Sevenwaters, the plot is structured around a quest to retrieve a missing baby which turns out to be engineered by the villain to lure his son into a trap, since he knew that the kidnapping would make the baby's older sister go after him, and that the son would accompany his love interest.
- Henry organizes one of these in The Secret History, in his plans for Bunny's murder and, later, the main characters' staying out of jail. This involves relying on his knowledge of his friends' habits and weaknesses to get them to do exactly what he wants them to do. He also uses this to lay the blame on other people, like Cloke Rayburn—but Richard is horrified when he finds out that Henry came very close to giving his name to the FBI.
- For Arsčne Lupin, the Hollow Needle mystery was pretty much all a Batman Gambit at the expense of the young amateur detective Isidore Beautrelet. Numerous others happen throughout Lupin's adventures but this is pretty much the biggest one.
- The Moth-kinden of Shadows of the Apt, being an entire race of Manipulative Bastards, pull a rather nice one of these. The inhabitants of Tharn know The Empire's going to annex them at some point; not being a warlike people, they gamble everything on getting one particular man installed as Governor, as just about the only Wasp who's Inapt — like all Moths. Their agents have already got to him and cut a deal: if the Moths teach him magic, he'll let them get on with their lives as if the Empire had never even noticed them.
- Halo: Ghosts of Onyx has some insurgents deliberately letting ONI learn of their nuclear weapons stockpile so that they can set a trap. It almost works too, if not for the insurgents not knowing about Kurt's near-prescience.
- Basically everything Belisarius does is either an Indy Ploy or a brilliant Batman Gambit. One of his more notable? A half-year long military campaign which he planned to lose, so that the advancing enemy army would continue pursuing part of his army past where another part of his army was concealed, allowing them to slip away with a unit of formed enemy troops the Malwa had assumed was annihilated the previous year, showing up in a completely different part of Persia disguised as ordinary prisoners of the "enemy unit", pull of a Trojan Horse attack that in one blow destroys logistical base of the Malwa in Persia while he sails off in a fleet of ships his wife had organized, resulting in the greatest military defeat in world history up to that point to a Malwa army 10 times the size of his...and not the one he was originally fighting. Because he wanted that Malwa army, its commander, and their "defeating" Belisarius" in battle to be considered the only good part of the whole situation by the Malwa.
- Lucretia from Bystander admits that most of her problems in the main storyline are a result of her novice attempts at this.
- To clarify, her actual gambits mostly work, but she didn't do much as far as planning for a way to stop a reprisal.
- The short story "The Man At the Table" by C.B. Gilford features an unusual example of this trope. Byron Duquay is sitting at a card table, preparing for guests, when an escaped killer, Rick Masden, enters his home. Duquay convinces Masden to sit at the opposite end of the table for a drink. Masden demands money and the keys to Duquay's car. Duquay says he will give Masden neither, and then proceeds to tell him that if Masden attempts to get up with his knife, Duquay will upend the table on him and grab his own, larger knife. Masden is clearly less muscular than Duquay, and at a disadvantage in a physical fight. Masden quickly realizes that Duquay was expecting company, and that Duquay is trying to delay him until help can arrive, which Duquay admits calmly. They reach an arrangement where Masden will leave his knife behind and leave empty-handed. It is just then that the other guests arrive, and Masden is apprehended. In a Crowning Moment of Awesome we learn that delaying Masden wasn't Duquay's real gambit. Bluffing him into thinking that he could and would fight Masden was. Duquay was paralyzed from the waist down, unable to stand. His wife had placed him in the chair earlier so he would feel like less of an invalid when playing cards with his friends.
- It's looked for a while like in The Dresden Files Harry's mother set one into motion before her death that would lead her sons to find each other, Harry to get useful information from her when it would most benefit him, and the downfall of the vampire who killed her. It could also be said that Gentleman Johnny Marcone Batman Gambits off Harry's predictable hero tendencies.
- In the Gaunt's Ghosts novel ''His Last Command Gaunt wanted the inquisitors and senior commissars to learn about the Chaos portals, so he deliberately acted in a suspicious manner that Ludd would report.
- Saint Dane in the Pendragon series is a master Batman Gambiter; most of his plans are Batman gambits. In fact, he once pulls off a double gambit: the characters realize that he's pulling one of these off, but that itself was what he wanted!
- In the Star Trek: Typhon Pact novel Rough Beasts of Empire, the Tzenkethi manipulate Romulan politics so as to become an unofficial leading power in the Typhon Pact. The Romulans are the most powerful faction, but are currently led by somewhat hawkish leaders; this threatens the galactic stability seemingly desired by the Tzenkethi. In order to "reign in" the Romulans without drawing attention to themselves or damaging the Romulans' actual strength (which serves the Pact well), they conspire to remove the current Romulan leader and install a Praetor they'd prefer be in power - all through subtle manipulation (and a few assassinations disguised as natural causes). This gambit is played out as Praetor Tal'aura works on her own; to reclaim the breakaway worlds of Donatra's Imperial Romulan State by framing Donatra for a supposed attack on Ambassador Spock, then arresting her when she accepts an invite to a diplomatic conference on Romulus. The latter gambit is playing into the former, as a reunited Romulan state benefits the Typhon Pact and thus is in the best interests of the Tzenkethi.
- A fully-justified humdinger of one is pulled off in James P. Hogan's The Multiplex Man. In a World Twenty Minutes into the Future where East and West have exchanged ideologies, a terminally-ill scientist researching Neural Implanting is trying to escape "The Green Curtain" and defect to the free East. But after a close-call with a Super Soldier the corrupt American government created with his research, he realizes he won't survive the night. So, he imprints himself in the super soldier's Neuro Vault minutes before he dies. Once in the super soldier, he incinerates his corpse and send an encrypted communication to his allies detailing how create a Linked List Clue Methodology which will lead the super-soldier to a place where he can be retrieved from the soldier's Neuro Vault. It works out perfectly because the super soldier is nothing more than a program, and thus the scientist is able to tailor the clues to be irresistible to it.
Live Action TV
- In the Firefly episode "Objects in Space," River pulls one of these on Jubal Early, using both his insecurities and the rest of the crew to maneuver him into position to be ambushed by Mal. The only thing she didn't factor in was her brother's rather suicidal devotion to her.
Mal: C'mon, you can yell at your brother for ruining your perfect plan.
River: (sigh) He takes so much looking after.
- A standard of many spy stories. There was a top quote from an episode of Burn Notice that featured Michael Westen on the unfortunate receiving end of a gambit by a rival spy. This required him to formulate his own gambit to counter how effective the first gambit was. As for Michael himself, despite not having personally killed anyone since the first episode, he's indirectly responsible for 90% of the deaths on the show. Another quote from the show:
Michael: (voice-over) In the spy game you spend a lot of time getting people to betray their own. Most do it for money, some do it for spite. But the greatest achievement is to get a guy to turn on his own people because he thinks he's being loyal.
- About 90% of Mission: Impossible episodes center around a Batman Gambit on the part of the IMF. The remaining 10%, and the first movie, center around what happens when such a gambit goes horribly wrong.
- But, when things are just about to go wrong for the gambit (which is usually once an episode right before a commercial break, just to keep viewers glued to their seats), Xanatos Speed Chess ensues or a Deus ex Machina will come around and distract the mark and draw them away from discovering The Masquerade. And they also had one episode that used a Xanatos Gambit instead of the usual Batman Gambit.
- In Doctor Who, the Seventh Doctor is a master Chessmaster setting up all the pieces and having his enemies and friends effortlessly go where he wants them to go in order to save the day... at first glance. However, many of the TV stories involving this aspect of his character end up revolving around the sudden realisation that something is happening that he didn't actually plan for (such as two factions of Daleks seeking out the Hand of Omega rather than one), or someone does something that he didn't expect, necessitating a frantic run-around as he desperately tries to improvise some stop-gap solution to get things back on track.
Doctor: Ace, do you have any of that nitro-9 I told you not to bring with you?
Ace: Yes.
Doctor: Good girl.
- Also in Doctor Who, the Tenth Doctor is taken to task by Davros for doing precisely this. Davros points out to the Doctor that he makes a big point of how pacifistic he is, while at the same time manipulatively turning those around him into the kind of people who will blow up their own planet to stop an invasion.
- The Tenth Doctor is pretty fond of this — feigning ignorance and getting himself captured so he can be brought face to face with the bad guy of the week. Ninth plays around with it too — "I'm really glad that worked. Those would have been terrible last words."
- Twice in series 5, the freakin' Daleks pull one on the Doctor.
- First, in "Victory of the Daleks", they let him declare himself as the Doctor and identified his enemies. This was exactly what the Daleks wanted, as their Progenator wouldn't recognize their spoiled DNA. They needed their oldest and most powerful enemy to tell the Progenator who they were, setting off the creation of a new bigger, badder, and technicolor Dalek race. Nice Job Breaking It, Hero...
- Then, in "The Pandorica Opens": the alliance of the Doctor's enemies sets up the message that "the Pandorica is opening", so that the Doctor will arrive to find and stop the Sealed Evil in a Can inside. Of course there's actually nothing inside, they just wanted the Doctor to show up so they could seal him.
- In series 6, the Doctor defeats the Silence by scattering his allies, building a prison and cloaking the TARDIS, all to get a Silent to say one phrase.
- The Argentinian series Los Simuladores is entirely about pulling Batman Gambits on unsuspecting people to make them change somehow or right a wrong. One episode, for example, features a faked bank robbery meant to delay the purchase of a bank, while another involves staging a date with a Paul Mc Carthy impostor in order to bring up her self-esteem and make her more socially active.
- Prison Break. The initial prison break from Fox River was one big Batman Gambit. Note how Michael included the reactions of criminals he doesn't even know in his plans. It is also interesting that Michael learns that it isn't as easy as he thought, leading to some use of Xanatos Speed Chess. However, he also requires dumb luck (if it weren't for circumstances changing for characters included in his Batman Gambit, such as Sucre and Westmoreland, they would never have played along).
- It's actually lampshaded by Lincoln, who tells Michael that he may have the blueprints of Fox River and a plan to break out, but that he can't rely on or predict criminals.
- In the Prison Break episode "Hell or High Water", Scofield tells the other would-be escapees that once he cuts the power, there's only 30 seconds to get across the no-man's-land surrounding Sona and through the electrified fence before the backup generator kicks in. The three looking out only for themselves insist on going first and are caught out in the open when the lights come back on 10 seconds later. Their recapture then serves as a diversion while he and the rest escape.
- Christina Rose shows in S.O.B that the Batman Gambit is hereditary, manipulating an alleged buyer for Schylla into instead becoming an unknowing sacrificial lamb that catalyzes the change necessary to maximize Scylla's true worth, while getting Lincoln Burrows and his posse to ignorantly take the fall for said lamb's slaughter.
- In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the Founders pull off a pretty cool one that may actually be the result of a retcon. Season four ends with Odo being taken inside the Founders' "Great Link" to be judged for killing one of his own, during which he can sense that they're trying to keep certain faces and names secret from him in the telepathic orgy. He figures that these are people who the shape-shifting Founders have killed and are impersonating, and later realizes that one of them was Gowron, the leader of the Klingons. The season five premiere features a mission to expose this Founder, and the only way to do it is to kill him. Luckily, Odo realizes at the last moment that the real Founder is the Klingon general Martok, who would be perfectly positioned to take over the empire after Gowron was killed, with the Federation thinking he was dead.
- And, even better, in Season 7 this turns out to be a two-way Batman Gambit, because it is revealed that Section 31 had infected Odo with a Founder-killing virus and used his "trial" as a way of infecting the whole Great Link with it.
- They shouldn't have been surprised. After all, the Founders fairly effortlessly managed to manipulate the secret police of both Romulans AND Cardassians into the mother of all massacres — when of course, they thought that THEY would be exterminating the Founders... and again, this was all thanks to Odo.
- The season 5 episode "For The Uniform" features one of these: After Eddington, a traitorous former Starfleet officer poisoning colonies, gives Sisko a copy of Les Miserables, Sisko realizes that Eddington is living out the role of Jean Valjean. Sisko uses this knowledge to convince Eddington to give himself up, as part of his Hero Fantasy.
- Better than all of the above: IT'S A FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE! Almost a Gambit Roulette — the plan relies on the FAAAAAAAAAKE being discovered in order for it to work — and Sisko could have ended it all if it weren't so damn awesome. Brilliant Batman Gambit in that it's fueled by crazy preparedness, like predicting how one character will react... and then predicting another character's reaction to the reaction.
- However, the plan didn't require that the fake be discovered. The Romulan could have left for home believing the recording to be genuine, Garak still would have assassinated him by planting a bomb, and the Romulan government would respond accordingly.
- Quark pulled one in the Season 3 episode "The House of Quark." Quark finds himself in charge of a Klingon house, and the only way to save it from being conquered is to face his rival in a duel to the death. Rather than try to fight someone he has no hope of beating, he shows up for the duel, but immediately surrenders. He then goads his opponent into trying to kill him, all while reminding the crowd they all knew the outcome before they even walked into the room. His opponent is more than happy to oblige — until Gowron stops him and strips him of his honor for trying to kill someone as pathetic and low as Quark. Just as planned.
- Captain Kirk lived for this trope. The aptly titled episode "The Carbomite Maneuver" features Kirk bluffing a powerful alien force. He later reuses this particular ploy in "The Deadly Years". His entire battle with the Romulan commander in "The Balance of Terror" features him and the Romulan commander pulling these on each other in rapid succession. Kirk and the Romulan are able to predict each other's behavior as being "just what they would have done." And in "A Taste of Armegeddon", Kirk is able to stop a centuries-old "clinical war" by destroying the war computers, abrogating the treaty between the two worlds. The two planets were now faced with the prospect of the horrors of real war, or actually working for peace.
Kirk: Death, destruction, disease, horror... that's what war is all about, Anan. That's what makes it a thing to be avoided. But you've made it neat and painless — so neat and painless, you've had no reason to stop it, and you've had it for five hundred years. Since it seems to be the only way I can save my crew, my ship... I'm going to end it for you — one way or another.
- And when Spock points out the possibility that the gambit may have failed:
Spock: Captain, you took a big chance.
Kirk: Did I, Mr. Spock? They had been killing three million people a year. It had been going on for five-hundred years. An actual attack wouldn't have killed any more people than one of their computer attacks, but it would have ended their ability to make war. The fighting would have been over. Permanently.
McCoy: But you didn't know that it would work.
Kirk: No. It was a calculated risk. Still, the Emenians keep a very orderly society, and actual war is a very messy business. A very, very messy business. I had a feeling they would do anything to avoid it, even talk peace.
- No one brings up the possibility that they will simply rebuild and continue their neater war.
- Marya does this casually in Hogan's Heroes. She purposefully makes things hard for Hogan, including having him taken hostage in a rocket factory they both know has a bomb planted inside it and throwing doubts on her loyalty, because she's sure Hogan will figure something out that will also kill her Nazi contact as collateral damage.
- Most of the cons used in Hustle rely upon this.
- Ditto Leverage.
- Spike of Buffy the Vampire Slayer uses this to good effect in the episode "The Yoko Factor". Knowing the personalities and temperament of each character, he casually plants information with each of them to turn them on each other. He does it in a way that's particularly ingenious: he relies on their own expectations of him to lead the characters into "discovering" the false rumors for themselves... so that each of them thinks it was their own idea.
- YMMV on whether it counts as "ingenious" - the fight lasted less than an episode, and directly led them to the idea which helped them destroy the season's Big Bad. If it was a Batman Gambit, it wasn't a very good one.
- Todd Gack from Seinfeld has figured out a "dating loophole" where he makes a bet with a woman about something he knows isn't true, offering to treat her to dinner if he loses. This allows him to essentially go on as many dates as he wants without ever having to actually ask any women out.
- Attempted by Jerry and George to switch Jerry's girlfriend with her roommate by offending her by suggesting a mengé á trios. It all blows up in their faces when it turns out the girlfriend and roommate were both "into it."
- Friar Tuck pulls one of these in the first episode of the third series of the BBC's Robin Hood: Robin has become disillusioned, so Tuck gets the rest of the gang captured. Naturally, Robin goes to save them, which also rekindles the myth - the population think he's dead, so naturally, appearing just after an eclipse is quite a spectacle...
- Awesomely implemented in Samurai Sentai Shinkenger; the title team tricks one of the Big Bads into kidnapping one of them instead of the baddie's original target in order to find out where she's holding the rest of her captives. Unfortunately, the Big Bad knew they were going to do this, and had her minions kidnap the real target, anyway, using the Shinkenger in her custody to lure the others into a trap. However, the Shinkengers anticipated that, and replaced the real target with another of their members, using him to find out the location of the Big Bad and using shadow puppets to make it look like they had fallen for her trap.
- Gregory House pulls off a small scale Batman Gambit: when his game in the 4th season ended, he wanted to hire Kutner, Taub and Thirteen. But since Cuddy already hired Foreman, he could only hire two. Solution: hire the two male ones to let the slightly feminist director let him hire Thirteen.
- Cuddy originally says it's about how he needs a woman on the team, but admits later it's because Thirteen gives a rat's ass about other human beings, whereas Foreman and Taub are just ambitious and House and Kutner are mostly in it for the puzzle. Not really feminism, more like House knows Cuddy sorta likes Thirteen.
- Dollhouse. Specifically, the entire first season was one long Batman Gambit by Alpha to get inside the Dollhouse and recover Echo.
- In Hustle Mickey can sometimes get a bit Batman-y. The crowning example is probably when, in a competition with Danny, he bases a scam not just on assuming Danny will try and steal his mark, but also how he'll try to do it.
- In It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the characters will occasionally form Batman Gambits with some degree of success. In the episode 'Mac Bangs Dennis' Mom', Charlie forms a Batman Gambit in response to finding out that Mac had slept with Dennis and Dee's mom. At first, in order to get out of menial work, Dennis threatens to sleep with the Waitress, who is the object of Charlie's desire. However, Charlie brings Dennis to witness Mac leaving Dennis' mom's house, but prevents Dennis from physically confronting Mac, suggesting the alternative of having Dennis sleep with Mac's mom. Charlie then enlists the help of Dee by promising to relieve her of the menial labor bestowed upon her the previous episode. Dee brings the Waitress to witness Dennis attempting (and failing) to seduce Mac's mom. Dee then suggests to the Waitress that she get back at Dennis by sleeping with Charlie. The Gambit inevitably fails, however, as the Waitress opts to sleep with Dennis' dad instead, much to Charlie's chagrin.
- Dennis pulls a successful one later, when he has a conflict with a local hippie trying to save a tree. Dennis offers to chain himself to the tree, which makes him look selfless and goads the hippie into chaining himself there instead. While he stands in the rain all night, Dennis bangs his girlfriend. Then he comes back the next day, unchains him, and makes him watch the tree being bulldozed.
- The titular character of Nikita pulls one of these in practically each episode of season 1, before finding herself more frequently as the recipient in season 2.
- Barney Stinson's Scuba Diver play in The Playbook episode of How I Met Your Mother. The Scuba Diver, Barney tells a meddlesome female friend, in this case Lily, about the Playbook, a book of schemes he's invented to pick up women. He then uses a scheme from the playbook to hit on her coworker, making Lily angry enough to steal the Playbook and tell her friend all about the scams he pulled. Barney then puts on a scuba suit and tells Lily that he's going to pull one more scam called the Scuba Suit on a hot girl standing at the bar. This causes Lily to go and tell the girl about the Playbook and incensed they both come back to Barney and demand to know what the scheme is. Barney then makes up a spiel about his deep insecurities, causing Lily to feel bad for Barney and eventually convince the girl to go out with him.
- The Sanctuary episode Veritas features a Batman Gambit by the immortal doctor/scientist Helen Magnus which involved self-induced madness and the apparent death of a friend at her own hand. It's not clear exactly who is/are the target(s) of this gambit until the very end—unless you caught a fleeting glimpse of the little smile on the face of the guilty party at a highly inappropriate moment.
- The Big Bang Theory episode "The Creepy Candy Coating Corollary" has Wil Wheaton pull off one of these, to win a card game against Sheldon.
- Later Wil returns as a member of a rival bowling team. He talks Penny into dumping Leonard during a vital tournament. Leonard leaves in tears, Sheldon's team is disqualified and Wil Wheaton is cemented as the Magnificent Bastard of the series.
Wil: You don't really think I'd break up a couple just to win a bowling match, do you?
Sheldon: No, I guess not.
Wil: [grins] Good. Keep thinking that.
- Cal Lightman on Lie to Me uses this incredibly often, much to everyone's annoyance.
- Amanda Waller pulls of one in the Smallville episode Extreme Justice. It looks like she's having the members of the long-retired Justice Society of America killed as a continuation of the government frame that originally put them out of business. Reality is she's provoking the surviving JSA members to come out of retirement to get back in the game, and meet and inspire the new generation of superheroes, because of something coming that will cause the planet to need all of its heroes.
- Michael Garibaldi of Babylon 5 never starts a conversation before first figuring out where it'll lead. As an inversion, he also prepares a bonus for those who manage to positively surprise him.
- The implications of having such a mind is lampshaded by Byron when he mocks Garibaldi by pointing out what a sad, lonely life he must lead. It might have been a Crowning Moment of Awesome for the character, if the fandom had actually liked the character of Byron.
- Sheridan also performs one in Rumors, Bargains and Lies. The League of Non-Aligned Worlds are rebuffing his attempts to set up a border patrol system, seeing ulterior motives where there aren't any. He provides them with plenty of Paranoia Fuel via Ivanova's completely truthful Suspiciously Specific Denial. By the end of the episode, they're demanding to be protected by the White Star Fleet.
- Going back to season 3, Nightwatch seems on the verge of taking over the station. Zack informs the leader of a bunch of Narns coming in supposedly to replace them: the smoking gun they've needed to arrest Sheridan for sedition. So every able hand is summoned to the docking bay to capture the evidence. Only there is no evidence. Sheridan had known they couldn't pass up such a prospect, and it helps to have a Fake Defector to lead most of Nightwatch into your well-laid PPG-proof trap.
- In Lost, Desmond Hume in the parallel-alternate-off-island reality ran one of these gambits to get everyone to remember their lives on the island.
- At the very least played with in Desperate Housewives, when Angie is forced to make a bomb for her terrorist ex-lover. When he tells her he planted the bomb in the house to kill the son she took from him, she runs, seemingly to try and save his life. In reality, she was just getting a safe distance, because unbeknownst to the ex-lover, the bomb was in the remote he was holding.
- In Frasier episode The Apparent Trap, his and Lilith's son pulls one on them, by setting them up so that they would feel so bad about dashing his hopes they'd buy him his minibike. Lilith figures him out, though.
- Rumpole of the Bailey: Rumpole becomes a minor master of these, pulling them off with some regularity as time went on. His most fascinating and awesome one involved him settling both major plotlines in one move, faking his death to both collect from a shady and notoriously hard-to-find solicitor known to try and bargain down his back payments to barristers with grieving widows (thus solving some money trouble that had gotten him in serious trouble with She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed*
i.e. his wife Hilda ). This allowed him to then serve a subpoena to the solicitor; the solicitor's testimony won him the case he was arguing.
- In the eleventh episode of Spartacus Blood And Sand, Batiatus sets in motion his own revenge-driven Batman Gambit by kidnapping Magistrate Calavius, and instructing Ashur only to kill him at the appropriate time. Batiatus times this with Pompey's primus so that he can get close to Calavius' son, Numerius, and have an alibi. Meanwhile, Ashur has been gaining the trust (read: money) of Solonius by warning him of attempts Batiatus has made on his life. Ashur is too frightened of the repercussions of this plan to talk about it however. Eventually, Ashur wants out and wants to spiel on Batiatus's plan in exchange for enough cash to get out of town. When Ashur leads him to the magistrate, he already has had his throat cut. Batiatus then conveniently bursts in with his guards and with the magistrates son and Asher goes to his side. Solonius is then caught over the dead Magistrate holding a dagger and seized at Batiatus' order.
- Jim Rockford is a master of these, whether as part of a con, or to catch a criminal. Two of his best appear in the episodes "There's one in Every Port" and "Joey Blue-Eyes." They are far too beautiful to describe.
- Patrick Jane in The Mentalist constantly pulls these off. Most episodes involve him "fishing"—setting up a trap, and then just waiting to see if it works. As Jane himself pointed out, "if not, we get a relaxing day out of it."
- These fly left, right and center on Alias, but the characters most prone to them are villains Irina, Sloane, and Sark. In contrast, Jack prefers Xanatos Gambits mixed with his chessmaster skills.
- Columbo is a master of this, often using it to get the villain of the week to incriminate themself.
- For example, one suspect was a stage magician with a guillotine trick. Columbo secretly switched the gimmick to its lethal state before submitting to a demonstration, expecting that the suspect would switch it again in an attempt to kill him. If the suspect were innocent, Columbo would die; rotten luck for the suspect. Luckily Columbo never errs, and the suspect unwittingly switched the gimmick back to safe, saving Columbo from suicide.
- The Andy Griffith Show was built around this trope. Usually involving Andy using the BMG to get people to solve their own problems/benefit themselves.
- Abed from Community, thanks to his Genre Savvy-ness and prophetic ability to predict the action of those around him will occasionally pull this off. A prime example he was able to manipulate both Jeff's Team Dad and Britta's Team Mom instincts in order to finish a student film.
- Goren does these almost Once an Episode on Law & Order: Criminal Intent. He's usually compared to Sherlock Holmes by the series' creators, but he's really a lot more like Columbo.
- Walt does this throughout Breaking Bad and he continually gets better at stringing together assassination plans and manipulating those around him as the show progresses. Eventually, he pulls off a huge gambit in the season 4 finale where he manipulates an elaborate set of events and people in order to arrange for the Big Bad of the season, Gus, to be blown up in a retirement home..
- Happens quite frequently on Corner Gas, occasionally resulting in a Gambit Pileup, although they are probably for the most mundane things on this list, like not owing someone a favor, and most of the humor comes from how well (or not) the characters are able to pull off the gambit, but that shouldn't be surprising given the sitcom's premise.
- Played for Laughs on 30 Rock: Jack cracks a joke about Liz, who then hands him an envelope with the exact words of his joke written inside. Taken Up to Eleven when Jack responds by handing her an envelope that says "You will hand me an envelope with my joke written on it"
- Mr. Gold's plan to help Emma win a municipal election in Once Upon A Time. While Emma is in the Mayor's office arguing with Regina, he sets fire to City Hall, giving Emma a chance to rescue Regina and be shown to be a hero. When Emma finds out about this, she is furious, but Gold points out that if she denounces him, she loses the election and disappoints everyone. She does denounce him and wins anyway, which Gold then reveals was All According to Plan. Saving the rather unpopular Regina wouldn't have been enough to win Emma the election. Showing everyone that she was tough enough to stand up to Gold, the most feared man in town, however, was a different story.
- In NewsRadio, Jimmy James has proven himself able to use these upon his employees. Most of the other employees have managed to pull off one or two of their own as well.
- Richard Pryor's "Prison Play" skit involves the play's producer promising the warden that "The Nigger gets killed" as Laser-Guided Karma for daring to fall in love with a White woman. However, it ends with the father-in-law accepting the suitor and wanting to becoming a paragon of true love. The Warden isn't happy.
Warden: Horseshit! Wait a minute! Just wait a goddamned minute! You said the nigger got killed! I wan' me a goddamn dead nigger up in here else I'll hang here one of these homosex-u-als!
- Used by "Boston" Rob Mariano on Season 7 of The Amazing Race, during the four pounds of meat Roadblock. After deciding that eating four pounds of meat was impossible, he quit the task and took the four-hour penalty. Since the penalty did not start until the next team showed up, he used that to his advantage, waiting for his own penalty to start before convincing two other teams to also quit the task, counting on their initial squeamishness at starting the task to cause them to follow his lead. Cue Evil Gloating about how he could not get eliminated that leg.
- In Season 5, Chip & Kim built up Colin & Christie's egos and made them over-confident, trusting that any sort of struggle later would cause them to self-destruct. Earlier in the Season their plan was to encourage the rivalry between Colin and Mirna in order to get them to focus more on each other than the race, however Charla & Mirna got eliminated too quickly for this to come to fruition.
Mythology and Religion
- This happened in one Greek Mythology story, Zeus decided to take revenge at humanity because Prometheus stole fire from him. He did this by first giving Prometheus' brother Epimetheus a woman named Pandora who was very curious. With her also came a mysterious box in which Pandora was told never to open it. Naturally, Pandora's curiosity got the better of her and now humanity is ravaged with diseases and vices.
- Speaking of Greek mythology, The Odyssey features how Odysseus manages to escape the cyclops. When he's first captured, he tells the cyclops that his name is "Nobody". Although his plan does work in the end, it rests on the assumptions that 1) the cyclops's brothers will be within hearing distance when Odysseus blinds the cyclops, 2) that they'll ask if there's anyone there, 3) that the cyclops will say "It's Nobody," and 4) they'll buy it.
- Several of these are in The Bible. The serpent/Satan pulls one by getting Adam and Eve to disobey God by questioning whether he has the right to tell them what to do, knowing that God won't kill them immediately or else look like he is afraid of someone not being under his authority, thus possibly causing the angels to question his authority. God retaliates by exploiting his Vetinari Job Security and ceding Earth to Satan and the humans so they can screw themselves over trying to rule themselves. God then turns on his foresight and pulls a 4,000-year-long gambit ending in the death of Jesus Christ to redeem the rest of humanity who got pulled into this whole mess.
- Does it count if you are omnipotent?
- If you go with Milton's explanation of free will in omnipotence (Necessity does not equal certainty) then yes, it does. Otherwise...
- King Solomon pulled this off when he determined which of two women was the true mother of a child they both claimed was theirs. He proposed that the child be cut in half so that both women would have part of him, rightfully believing that the false mother would allow the "division" and that the real mother would sooner have her son be raised by someone else than have him killed.
New Media
- According to this report, a Harry Potter fan known as MsScribe pulled off an elaborate Batman Gambit involving an untold number of sockpuppets to garner sympathy, advance her popularity, and secure her place in what was then the fandom's inner circle.
- This can be an effective way of dealing with Internet trolls. Set up the right conditions and they'll possibly admit to trolling (in an attempt to grief you) or saying something incriminating that can get them modded (often happens when they brag) or used against them — such as one review troll who after being accused of not buying the game, admitted he had bought the game to play it and piss everyone off. Said review troll's credibility was destroyed, and most of his reviews were removed.
- One way people manage to get more money from their items sold in Ebay is to get a friend's account to bid alongside genuine bidders, this gambit would assume that the genuine bidders wanted the item enough that they would bid higher when the "friend account" offers a higher price.
Pro Wrestling
- During Bret Hart's feud with Vince McMahon, a woman accidentally backs her car into Hart's limo as he was getting in, severely injuring his left leg in the process. McMahon would then spend the following weeks verbally abusing Hart, until he finally managed to goad him into a No Holds Barred match for Wrestlemania XXVI. During the contract signing, Hart then reveals that the limo accident and the subsequent leg injury were nothing more than an elaborate con to manipulate McMahon's ego and trap himself into a match with a supposed cripple.
- Part of Carlito's gimmick is to bite into an apple and then spit it into a person's face. One time, he attempted this on The Big Show, only for Show to steal the apple and Neck Lift him. Show decides to beat him at his own game and bites into the apple, only to collapse. Carlito explains that he saw this coming, and poisoned the apple. He then beats up the weakened Big Show. If Show didn't decide to use the apple, who knows how this situation would have turned out.
- Raven is a master of this, he manipulates peoples hopes dreams fears and desires to the point of becoming a Dark Messiah to his followers.
- Jerry Lawler pulls off a masterful one on Michael Cole on the May 16th, 2011 edition of Raw. Jerry, after accepting a match with Cole at Over The Limit, tells Cole that he doesn't respect him...but does respect Cole's Dragon Jack Swagger for being a former world champion and great wrestler. He then says Cole's made Swagger nothing but his sidekick. Michael Cole responds by gloating about how being his sidekick has made Jack a much greater star and no one remembers that he used to be world champion...with Jack Swagger right in the ring. The result is a seriously ticked off Swagger telling Jerry Do With Him As You Will and abandoning Cole. Jerry's reaction pretty much confirms this was a ploy to use Michael's own ego to isolate him from his own ally.
Real Life
Sports
- The Miami Dolphins pulled this one off against division rivals New York Jets in what is known as the "Fake Spike Game." With only 22 seconds remaining in the clock, the Dolphins were out of timeouts and were down 21-24. The Dolphins reached the Jets 8-yard line. Quarterback Dan Marino seems to indicate that he was going to spike the ball to stop the clock and try a field goal that will tie the game and push for an overtime. Anticipating a spike, the Jets defense lined up haphazardly. Instead, Marino didn't spike the ball and with the Jets caught off guard, Marino passed the ball to wide-receiver Ingram for a touchdown. Because of the "fake spike," the Dolphins ended up winning the game 28-24 in regulation rather than pushing for overtime.
- Most trick plays are a form of this. The play-action pass is a good example. Fake a hand off to the runningback, expecting the defense to play as they should against the run: converge on the runningback. Meanwhile you, the quarterback, have all the time in the world to pass down the field. Like all true Batman Gambits, this can be ruined spectacularly. An all-out blitz can disrupt a play-action pass, as enough blitzers can get in the backfield to swallow BOTH the QB and RB.
Tabletop Games
- In War Hammer 40000,: The Eldar, all the time. Because they specialise in reading the various futures that arise from each course of action, they know exactly how to manouevre their enemies into doing what they want. The Eldar call this pragmatism; everyone else calls them a bunch of underhanded bastards.
- The "Social Combat" rules in the New World Of Darkness allow someone to do this. Between Sway (persuading or manipulating others), Anticipation (predicting people or events) and Setup (organising people in order to set events in motion), it is possible to make such plans (or retroactively work them in after the fact).
- A good Tabletop RPG Game Master will do this to some extent to prevent things from going Off the Rails without the players feeling Rail Roaded. Have the players decided to take the left hand path or a right hand path? Doesn't matter. The Bandits just happened to set up the ambush on whichever route the players choose.
Theater
- In the musical 1776, Congress needs a unanimous vote to declare independence. Right when John Dickinson is about to tell the Congress that Pennsylvania votes nay, Benjamin Franklin gets his Chessmaster on and asks that the three delegates be polled. Dickinson and Franklin cancel each other out by voting "nay" and "yea" respectively, leaving everything up to Judge James Wilson, who's spent the entire production mindlessly seconding everything Dickinson says. But the entire question of American independence ends up in his lap, when, as Franklin tells him, "every mapmaker in the world is waiting for your answer," he realizes he doesn't want to be known forever as the man who stopped American independence.
- The entire sequence of "The Deal (No Deal)" from Chess. Molokov wants the USSR to win the chess tournament. De Courcey wants American prisoners in the USSR to be released. They work together to get defected Soviet champion Anatoly to throw the match, by A) pressuring his abandoned wife Svetlana to pressure him lest they make life difficult for her and her children, as well as B) pressuring his new lover Florence to pressure him by offering her the chance to see her Disappeared Dad again. They also bring in Unwitting Pawn Freddie to try and persuade Anatoly to throw the match for Florence's sake, but after a crushing rejection from both of them (and a show-stopping musical number) he turns on Molokov, De Courcey, and indeed everyone, and tells Anatoly how and why to win.
- Results vary in each version of Chess, though Anatoly ends up going back to the Soviet Union in all of them. In the London version, he wins the game; in others, he loses.
- In Phantom of the Opera, Raoul and the others pressure a fearful Christine into performing the lead role in the opera that the Phantom has written. Knowing full well that the Phantom will attend if she performs, they plan to catch him then. While this might not be what the Phantom wants precisely, he has anticipated it, and as such, is able to disguise himself and abduct Christine.
- In Sherlock Holmes, Holmes risks his life to negotiate the purchase of a MacGuffin from the villains, not letting Alice know he knows it's a fake in order to manipulate her into surrendering the real MacGuffin to the Count and Sir Edward, who congratulate Holmes for pulling off this ingenious scheme.
- In its original form, and shorn of its set pieces, The Nutcracker is a Batman Gambit by Herr Drosselmeyer, who sets up his goddaughter Clara to help him free his nephew, the Prince.
Video Games
- The Reapers in the Mass Effect series incorporate a galactic-scale Batman Gambit into their life-cycle. They leave highly advanced technology around the galaxy as well as the Citadel, the largest, most advanced space station in existence to ensure that races develop along technological and cultural paths they desire. especially with regards to the Citadel, which invariably becomes the cultural center of any empire Then, possessing the technology to counter what they left behind, they quickly eliminate all life in the galaxy and melt down several million members of any species they find to make more Reapers. One could say that the Reapers are the living embodiment of the Batman Gambit.
- Isaac pulls this on both Hector and Trevor in Castlevania: Curse of Darkness. He lures Hector (to whom he serves as a worthy opponent) along with the promise of eventually facing him in battle, and at the same time draws Trevor's attention. When he slips into the Infinite Corridor, Trevor is forced to let Hector into it... which leads to Hector accidentally breaking the seal on Dracula's Castle, Isaac's goal the entire time.
- Of course, ultimately, we learn who the real wirepuller is. It's Dracula, of course; he'd be playing Gambit Roulette if he didn't already have his hooks deep into Hector and Isaac's psyches and thus a much greater chance of success than the average Yagami. The entire game is triggered by Dracula's effort to resurrect himself, to wit — raise the castle with Isaac's yanking of Hector and Trevor, have Isaac stab that damn Belmont, then possess Hector when Hector finally gets sick of this nonsense and kills Isaac, thus sealing the curse. Alas, he wasn't counting on Julia being the only one in the game with a clue.
- Also, in Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, Mathias Cronqvist used Leon Belmont to kill Walter Bernhard to absorb his soul. At the end, Mathias is implied to be the Dracula, Lord of the Vampires.
- Implied? He slaps you in the face with the knowledge. The entire plot was designed so that he could become Dracula.
- In Thief 2, the Big Bad runs a Batman Gambit on the sheriff and the Big Bad of Thief 3 uses a Batman Gambit on the whole Keeper organization.
- In Overlord, the game turns out to be a Batman Gambit designed to allow the previous Overlord to easily return to his place in case he was "defeated", by taking over the body of the Wizard who helped slay him, manipulating one of the heroes who defeated him into becoming his temporary successor, and corrupting the other heroes so the new Overlord would be forced to eliminate them.
- Hideo Kojima is absolutely crackers about these.
- Metal Gear Solid features a hastily improvised Gambit (developed by the bad guys' resident psychic, sensibly enough) which revolves around a single-use keycard which will toggle a nuclear weapon from "active" to "inactive" or vice-versa. The bad guys seem to accept that facing off against the hero is a suicidal masquerade to set up deathbed conversions and make the plan convincing.
- The sequel goes into a full-blown Gambit Roulette to underscore the power of the Government Conspiracy. Or sentient assemblage of constitutional amendments, or AIs, or whatever the hell they are.
- The third game's tragic denouement reveals a Gambit (authored by an earlier iteration of the aforementioned conspiracy) which went right up to the pseudovillain's own demise at the hands of the hero.
- And the fourth is basically a Gambit Pileup, so let's not get started....
- All of the events within the PlayStation 2 Shinobi turn out to be one big Batman Gambit orchestrated by the Final Boss Hiruko: He manipulated Hotsuma into defeating Yatsurao so that the villain could absorb the countless number of souls that were subsequently released from the fallen giant. And he intended from the very beginning for Hotsuma to gather all of the souls of each foe he had sent to take him out, at which point he'd defeat Hotsuma and take all those souls for himself.
- In .hack//G.U. In what is possibly the longest to ever occur in gaming, Ovan uses a Batman Gambit that spans three games in order to make Haseo become strong enough to destroy him.
- If you count the anime — .hack//ROOTS — then it takes even longer. And Ovan has to step in at one point to make corrections to Haseo's development.
- In Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, the Labyrinth of Amala subquest has you tasked with defeating the ten Fiends and returning the Candelabrum they had stolen to Amala. If you complete the Labyrinth of Amala (it is optional) then the whole thing is revealed to be a Batman Gambit orchestrated by none other than Lucifer himself. The Fiends had never stolen the candelabrum; the entire thing was set up as a training exercise to create a new demon that would be strong enough to lead the armies of Deep Amala in an war against God Himself, as well as a test to see if you had the fortitude to fully embrace your demonic side and become Deep Amala's champion.
- From another Shin Megami Tensei game Persona 4 (which is about a murder mystery). Prodigy Detective Naoto Shirogane devises a plan to confirm his or rather her] suspicions that the police caught a copycat killer, not the real killer. she sets herself up as bait for the kidnapper, confident that the Investigation Team will rescue her. When the Investigation Team find out about this, they let Naoto have it, pointing out that gambling your life on the assumption a third party will get to you in time, regardless of the rewards involved, is really, really fucking stupid.
- The entirety of Assassin's Creed is actually two giant Batman Gambits. The first, planned by The Dragon, Robert de Sable, involves using the Assassins' killing of his lieutenants, all of whom are important members of Saladin and Richard the Lionheart's respective support networks, to unite the Saracen and Crusader armies to crush the Assassins. The second is planned out by Al-Mualim, who plans to have Altair kill all of the Templars who knew about the Piece of Eden, because he himself is a Templar plotting to take over the Holy Land for himself.
- And all that was a Xanatos Gambit by Abstergo to have Desmond reveal the locations of the Pieces of Eden. By then the entire plot becomes one huge Mind Screw: Abstergo are the Knights Templar who secretly are behind every technological innovation EVER, the Assassins still exist and try to stop them, Lucy might or might not be one of them, and then there's the scribbling on the wall...
- In Eternal Darkness, the 100% twist ending reveals that the entire game was just an absolute brilliant gambit run by the guardian god Mantorok so that it could eliminate the Eldritch Abominations it was tasked with sealing before it died.
- In Diablo II, the fallen archangel Izual reveals that :the Dark Exile, the capturing of the Prime Evils in soulstones and the plot of Diablo I was a Batman Gambit planned by the Prime Evils and himself. This is no doubt a retcon, though.
- Laharl uses one in Episode 6 of Disgaea to lure all of his competitors for the Overlord's throne into Blair Forest, set up as a contest to wrest the "Deed to the Title of Overlord" from him. There is, of course, no deed, and after a mild hiccup in the form of a Hopeless Boss Fight, Laharl and co. defeat their enemies, and he gets to claim what (he thinks) is rightfully his.
- Also used a chapter earlier by his vassal Etna, who was supposedly the mole working for another deamon trying to overthrow Larhal. Only when he finally calls her onto the carpet she reveals that not only has she been expecting him to betray her, she's hired his own underlings out from under him, and set things up so that Laharl would be more than eager to help her take out Maderas.
- Also in Disgaea 1, the entire game is a Batman gambit on the part of King Krichevskoy and Seraph Lamington, using Larharl and Flonne to unite the netherworlds, and even using Volcanus' traitorous nature.
- Mao's father (now a ghost) pulls off one of these in Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice by manipulating the Xanatos Gambit of Big Bad Aurum against him. The gambit worked by utilizing Almaz and Raspberyl's good hearts to get Mao to open up his own heart. To help further that along, his hidden right hand man Champloo (he reveals his true allegiances and how he manages to be so good at investigation at the end of the game) to guide Almaz to be a proper hero.
- Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People Episode 2: Strong Badia the Free starts off with the King of Town placing Strong Bad under house arrest for not paying his new email tax: one Creamy Ding Snack Cake for every email sent or received, effective immediately and retroactively. Once Strong Bad breaks out, he launches into a massive screwball scheme to depose the King of Town, but as it turns out it was all a Batman Gambit the King of Town executed so that he could switch jobs with Strong Bad. The endgame involves turning the tables on the King of Town by levying an obscene tax against his precious snack cakes, inciting the King of Town to revolt against him and take his old job back.
- Ghaleon of Lunar fame manipulates the heroes' altruistic tendencies through his immense popularity. this results in the hero giving him every single thing he wants.
- The entirety of Kingdom Hearts Chain Of Memories is one giant Batman Gambit from Axel.
- Unfortunately, while it worked great in the game, the long-term consequences of it blew up in his face.
- The Ace Attorney games used these a few times.
- In the first game, Manfred von Karma had one of these as a backup plan, in case something went wrong (which, for him, has happened once in his 40 years as a prosecutor). If he failed to convict Edgeworth for the murder on Gourd Lake, he was hoping that he would confess to the DL-6 incident. He did, just as planned.
- In case 1-5, the main character himself pulled a beautiful one against Damon Gant. He used a legal loophole to withhold an evidence that would have otherwise cleared Gant of the murder. The angry Gant then confessed about everything short of the murder itself to get himself off the hook. Then Wright shows the evidence, which made said confession to incriminate him of the murder.
- Matt Engarde, Manipulative Bastard that he is, used one to hinder his rival by confessing that he had previously been in a relationship with his manager. Since his rival was currently in a relationship with his manager, he broke up out of pride. Having been heartbroken twice by the same man, she commited suicide.
- And in Ace Attorney Investigations 2 The ENTIRE GAME turns out to have been one by the Big Bad. So much so that the final case isn't so much a proper case is it is piecing together all the loose ends of the previous cases and realising they all point to one person.
- Half of Apollo Justice Ace Attorney is about Apollo being manipulated by Phoenix in his bid to reform the justice system and clear his own name. It starts when Phoenix is framed for murder by his "friend", Kristoph Gavin, whom he calls to defend him in court, but then get suspicious when Kristoph lets slip something about the death in the call, so he insists on having Apollo defend him instead, intending to manipulate the trial to get Apollo to prove Gavin did it. And since Apollo has now put his own boss in jail for murder this means Phoenix is now able to take Apollo under his wing to groom as his successor. Phoenix has come a long way since the first game.
- Quite a long way indeed.
- To a lesser extent, Klavier uses this against Apollo, letting him figure out and prove things Klavier had figured out long before, then turning these things against Apollo
- The entire plot of Ghost Trick hinges on a Batman Gambit set by Ray, a.k.a Missile from an alternate timeline to point Sissel in the right direction. Everything turns out according to plan, because he needed Sissel's Ghost Tricks and his ability to travel through phone lines; Missile-Prime couldn't prevent any of the deaths with his Ghost Swap power, nor could he travel through phones.
- Mephiles, the Big Bad of Sonic The Hedgehog 2006, pulls one using Silver. He tells Silver that Sonic is the one who will destroy the future, counting on Silver being desperate enough to change the future that he'll jump on a chance to change it without questioning any of it.
- In Soul Nomad and the World Eaters Rakasha travels with you, confident you will be able to defeat the other World Eaters (who he views as rivals), then waits until you are trapped and helpless before striking
- In Jade Empire The entire game is one of these. He's called the Glorious Strategist for a very good reason...; however, it is actually a double Batman Gambit; The Water Dragon helps his plan, needing it to free herself from the Emperor, creating the conditions, including your Master killing you, whereby she can fully free herself.
- In Half-Life 2 and especially Episode 2, it turns out that the G Man set up about everything that happened since the beginning of the first game. We still don't know what is hoped to be achieved with all this, though.
- The World Ends with You has a few of these: Kitanji manipulates Neku into spreading his O-pins around the city, which are vital for his Assimilation Plot, Joshua manipulates Neku into becoming the best player and winning his game against Kitanji for him, and Hanekoma manipulates EVERYONE simply be relying on everyone to act according to their nature, teaching Neku about The Power of Friendship , letting the Idiot Hero ruin Konishi's carefully laid plans and giving The Starscream rope to hang himself with.
- The entirety of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is one giant gambit courtesy of Shepherd. No, it's sure as hell not for a heroic cause.
- Some details make this a noteworthy example: short of magically discovering that the gambit exists, none of the Unwitting Pawns are even in a position to make it fail, and in fact, when one of them throws a Spanner in the Works that Shepherd is clearly not expecting or planning for, it actually ends up helping him anyway. This makes it seem like a Xanatos Gambit on the surface, but there is a failure condition that Shepherd would have no way of recovering from, and that's if the Russian's war against the United States had succeeded instead of being turned back.
- God of War III revealed that the entire fucking series was a Batman Gambit designed by Athena so that she could gain the power of hope that she had in the first place but also kill all the other gods and destroy the world without implicating herself and become the one savior of mankind.
- Kerrigan from Starcraft uses Batman Gambits frequently. She ends up getting the Protoss to work with her even after she's betrayed them repeatedly, mainly by manipulating and eventually abducting their Matriarch.
- Duran is another user of this, manipulating Du Gaulle into killing his best friend, as well as using Kerrigan herself as an unknowing pawn in his scheme to create a Protos/Zerg hybrid.
- Arcturas Mengsk is yet another possible example of this trope, getting Kerrigan and Jim Raynor to help him out and shelter him both before and after he's betrayed them on an epic scale.
- The AI of Galactic Civilizations is smart enough to pull these on the player as shown in this after-action report.
- Sigma's plans in Mega Man X 4 and 5 rely on the personalities of General, X, Zero and Maverick Hunter policy. Proto Man pulls off some impressive ones in Mega Man Megamix, too.
- Performed in Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors by Ace. He didn't want them going into Room Three (where there was the body of a person he had killed) and knew they would end up coming back to the room. By staying behind, they wouldn't be able to send in both groups, and so he injected himself with the drugs.
- Cortex's entire plan in Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back hinged on Crash believing his story about needing the crystals to save the planet from a cataclysm, rather than trying to find a way out of the location that Cortex had brought him at the start of the game. Of course, Crash isn't particularly bright.
- In Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic, one can pull this off against the two Sith masters of the sith enclave on Korriban. When Yathura comes to Revan to help her betray Uthar, you can agree to help her poison him. Revan can then turn around to Uthar, and tell him of Yuthara's plan. He will give Revan a device to help poison her. But then, the player can turn around and poison BOTH of them. Soon after finding the Star Map both Yuthara and Uthar stand there. After explaining some Sith lore, they suddenly open that they are now going to kill the other with Revan's help. It is then up to the player to decide who he wants to help, or he can even turn on both of them at once. Turning on bot actually gives the player the ability to deliver an awesome "The Reason You Suck" Speech, detailing how you used both's ignorance and arrogance on each other to weaken both of them so they'd be easier to kill, and it was all because they had not properly plotted a Xanatos Gambit.
Visual Novels
- In Tsukihime, it is revealed in the later routes that almost any part of the game related to the Tohno family (any/all given routes) was all an enormous Batman Gambit of epic proportions, schemed by the maid Kohaku as an attempt to get her revenge on the Tohno family for all the horrendous abuse Makihisa dealt out to her; it fully succeeds in 2 of the endings. Don't even get fans started on this topic, as they are highly divided on to what extent things were orchestrated.
Web Comics
- Ephemural orchestrates one of these in TwoKinds. He/she/it erased Trace Legacy's memories in order to prevent him from killing a young Keidran girl named Flora, and then incited a number of incidents where Trace's Superpowered Evil Side emerged, generating mistrust between them, in order to eventually force Flora to return to her people and complete an arranged marriage with the prince of the Wolf Clan, thus uniting the Tiger and Wolf Clans into a force strong enough to resist the expansionistic human empire. The only thing that saved him/her/it from crossing over into Gambit Roulette territory, is the fact that he/she/it has displayed literally divine powers, and could thus conceivably have arranged every apparently coincidental incident. Unfortunately for him/her/it, somebody else had a stake in the Xanatos Gambit as well...
- In Looking for Group, it has been suggested that Cale's trials from his time in Kethenecia of the past to his return to the now-abandoned city with a group of followers is apparently a Gambit executed by the Archmage in order to create a new age for the city and prepare Cale to be a proper king. Technically speaking, it was supposed to be a Xanatos Gambit, but a few things went wrong.
- In Freefall, Sam's Gambit is NOT having a Gambit, knowing that the people he's scamming will think he DOES have one, ergo thinking one up for him, in which he'll just have to show up to reap the rewards of.
- In Chapter 3 of The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, most of the... somewhat unlikely events early on are orchestrated by Fox News, in order to get some interesting stories. However, their plans are thwarted by another Batman Gambit, carried out by a Fox News weatherman that doesn't want raptor-riding banditos and whatnot distracting people from the fantastic weather they're going to have this coming weekend. The title main character is not pleased.
- The Order of the Stick's Big Bad Xykon does this to get the location of the MacGuffin. Poor, deluded Miko never even realizes she's been had.
- More recently, the three fiends played V's hunger for power, revenge, and personal glory quite magnificently against V.
- A one page joke serves as an excellent example of the trope: This page shows Hayley dividing the loot. She has given herself nothing but five completely valueless rocks. The others suspect her of trying to cheat them out of valuable artifacts. They make her redivide the loot so she gets more gold, and loses out entirely on the rocks. The rocks actually are valueless -- she wanted more gold.
- Xykon pulls one of these in the climax of Start of Darkness. Redcloak's brother Right-Eye is obsessed with destroying him, and has bought a magic knife that can deliver a sneak attack to an undead creature. Xykon knew about this, and protected himself accordingly. However, he still lets Right-Eye attack, knowing full well that Redcloak will kill his own brother rather than jeopardize The Plan. And now Xykon has proof that Redcloak will not betray him, will protect his phylactery, and will sink to any depths to see The Plan come to fruition; otherwise the sacrifice he made would be meaningless.
- The commanding members of Starscream's Brigade do this a lot in the Insecticomics. Starscream pulled his biggest Batman when Thrust, unbeknownst to himself still under the virus-induced influence of Sideways, had the Constructicons build a Hydra Cannon to power up the Fallen. Starscream knew all about this and let it happen. However, at the last minute he swapped the Mini-Cons used to power the cannon with the knockoff Mexicons, which rather than amplifying the Fallen's power completely drained it. This left the servants of Unicron helpless to avoid having their afts kicked by the Brigade.
- Schlock Mercenary features this often, as a common tactic of the near-omniscient AI "Petey". He once withdrew from an interstellar war against an entire species to deal with a bigger problem, because he knew exactly how his opponents would react.
Enemy officer: Suuuure, the quadrant looks abandoned. It always does, up until the screaming starts.
- Hawk from City of Reality managed to outwit an enemy capable of Mental Time Travel, and could deduce which iteration of his plan was going on from the baddie's initial reaction.
- Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal had a great issue where the Joker pulls a Batman Gambit on the Batman
- Buck Godot manages a most excellent one at the end of the PSmith storyline.
- In Oglaf (very NSFW comic, generally), this is parodied expertly by an overly clever man.
- One of the main characters of Blur The Lines (also a very NSFW comic), Rick (who is a chubby chaser), is very good at luring overweight straight men into sexual encounters without making them realize he is doing so, such as when he convinced a straight man to give him oral sex to get back at his girlfriend [1], or when he bet a man at PAX that he couldn't roll four evens out of ten. (For losing that bet, Rick had to give oral sex to every fat man in the room.)
- Lampshaded in Goblins. When Thaco challenges Dellyn to a duel, both of them know that Thaco has some sort of trap planned. Nonetheless, Dellyn accepts when Thaco points out that the only alternative is for Dellyn to order his soldiers to kill Thaco, and bear the reputation of not being able to kill a single old, frail goblin.
- Doc Scratch on Homestuck is a Manipulative Bastard whose chosen MO involves "nudging" characters down paths they most likely would've taken anyways. For example, he exploits Vriska's spiteful nature and suggests that she kill Aradia in revenge for summoning the spirits of Vriska's victims to haunt her.
- Collar 6. This wasn't intentionally set-up, but Trina knows that Michelle would never let Butterfly take Laura alone, and will sign herself over to protect her.
- The Think Tank pull one off in a board game in this Sequential Art strip.
- In Darken, Baal targets the loved ones of Gort and Mink by taking possession of Gort's brother Tyr and murdering Mink's mother solely to make them angry. Then he "allows" a spy to be captured and has it leak false information implying that Baal's daughter is in Falloakes. Said girl is actually the daughter of Asmodeus, the most powerful Archdevil of them all. If Jill hadn't been there to reveal the truth to Gort and Mink, they would have unwittingly ruined whatever plans Asmodeus had for the surface and sparked a war between Gort's patron Mephistopheles and Asmodeus. Leaving Baal relatively squeaky clean and in a position to expand his own power base while his archrivals duked it out.
- Riff pulls one of these—on himself, sort of—to bring Zoe back.
- Invoked after-the-fact in this installment of The Non-Adventures of Wonderella...
Wonderita: "Did you MEAN for this to happen?"
Wonderella: "If anyone asks, I'm gonna say I did."
Web Original
- At the Superhero School Whateley Academy in the Whateley Universe, there are Combat Finals at the end of Fall term 2006. In one chapter of Joe Gunnarson's Call the Thunder, Diamondback finds herself teamed with the Supervillain Hekate, who everyone in the entire school knows will backstab Diamondback first chance she gets. Diamond lays a very cunning Batman Gambit that only works if Hekate shafts her as soon as she gets the chance. Hekate grabs the Villain Ball for everything she's worth, leading to a very satisfying conclusion.
- Ayla, meanwhile, has one occur in her Birthday Party story. A group plans to give her a surprise Birthday Party, but has to make sure it's an honest surprise, to someone who expects they are going to give one.
- From the SCP Foundation: Termination Order is a story about two... relatively ordinary humans... assigned to kill a godlike being who causes reality to shift due to his emotional state. How do they do it? They keep him calm while silently dragging him to the moon through an elaborate series of interlocking plans involving a teleporting wading pool and illusionary butterflies, where they set off a bomb. Seriously.
- 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.
- Maddox managed to pull this one off against a hate-mailer when she insulted him, calling him an "Angry Bitter Man". Instead of ripping apart the hate-mail like he usually does, he instead responded to the hate-mail in an unconventional way by saying how he was abused as a child and his writing is a way of expressing himself. She responded back to him in a somewhat understanding manner, only to have Maddox responded back: "Just Kidding. Tool."
- The Slender Man himself pulled one of these in What You Are In The Dark. He took advantage of his own viral nature by implanting false memories into Reach, using him to "infect" the bloggers(as well as his "fandom" in general) with the idea of Revenants: supposedly humans horribly transformed into Slender Man's super-powered elite soldiers. However, he didn't realize that memories cannot be truly erased... only hidden. Reach eventually uncovered memories of his brainwashing and realized the lie. There are no revenants, only people brainwashed into thinking they are and Slender Man's enemies who believe it. This was done to scatter their attention away from Slim himself. What he'll do now that the illusion is uncovered is anyone's guess.
- In Land Games, Reckes uses a Batman Gambit to trick Mei into betraying her allies using her feelings for him against her.
Western Animation
You came from a failed link? No? Curses.
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