Did You Just Scam Cthulhu - Television Tropes & Idioms

I am Tzeentch, Lord of Change, Changer of the Ways, Master of Destinies. No mere mortal can... what is that pawn doing there...?

So, you've got this Chessmaster, Magnificent Bastard or what have you. People are his playthings in any scheme he concocts. But now it seems that he's up against a deity or other supernatural entity... whats this? Did this mere mortal just turn the god into another chess piece to manipulate?

That is the essence of Did You Just Scam Cthulhu - a Xanatos Gambit, Xanatos Roulette, Batman Gambit or other scheme concocted by the resident Magnificent Bastard ends up involving the manipulation of a supernatural entity, deity, etc. by a mortal. Such a plan may include the deity from the outset, or the deity may be integrated into the plan along the way.

This trope may intersect with Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu, especially if said Eldritch Abomination ends up coming off worse for wear as a result of the plot.

See Evil Is Not A Toy when someone attempts to invoke either this trope or make a Deal With The Devil, but fails.

Examples:

Anime and Manga

In Death Note, Light, world champion of the Xanatos Roulette, manages to manipulate Rem, a Shinigami into violating a rule for which the punishment is death.
In the Haruhi Suzumiya novels, Kyon forces the near-godlike Data Overmind to back down by threatening to provoke the even more godlike Haruhi into recreating the universe with him, to a place where the Overmind would not exist.
Lelouch of Code Geass manages to use his geass on what can reasonably be described as god, taking control of it and forcing it to delete his parents from existence.. Although the scene could be read as the entity doing this willingly, it spawned Memetic Mutation LELOUCH GEASSES GOD

Comic Books

John Constantine from Hellblazer is a master of this trope. In what's possibly his Crowning Moment Of Awesome, he sells his soul to the three most powerful demons in Hell at once, which would force them into a war with each other, leaving them no choice but to cure his terminal lung cancer and keep him alive. And then he flips them off.
- Why don't they just kill him, and keep him trapped for having the insolence to try and play them against each other?
  - Because by the laws of Hell, someone has to claim him, and since each of the Fallen has a claim to his soul, just giving it up to one of the other would be a sign of weakness. And if they actually went to war with each other over it, Heaven would take advantage of the chaos and invade. Mind you, this whole thing backfires when the First of the Fallen just decides to kill his fellow rulers and come after Constantine...
2000 AD: Cassandra Anderson manages to make Satan blow himself up by forcing himself into a Douglas Adams-style self-contradiction.
The Magus' Batman Gambit in The Infinity War miniseries involved the manipulation of some of the Marvel Universe's most powerful cosmic beings, from Galactus up to Eternity and even the Living Tribunal.
- And he himself was outmaneuvered by Adam Warlock and Thanos of Titan.
Speaking of Thanos, he also at one point literally scammed Mephisto. "You wanted a cosmic cube but didn't specify it had to be functioning..."
In Watchmen, Veidt's master plan involves the manipulation of pretty much the entire rest of the cast, up to and including Dr. Manhattan, an energy being of unimaginable power who can normally see the future as clearly as he can see the present.
Black Panther, being the Chessmaster he is, pulled this off with Mephisto. The Black Panther pledged his soul to Mephisto in exchange for Mephisto agreeing to depower an enemy of the Panther's that he had given great demonic power to. Mephisto lived up to his end of the bargain, and so did the Panther...but when Mephisto tried to claim the Panther's soul, Mephisto found that it was linked to the souls of the Panther God and every single previous Black Panther warrior in existence, whose sheer goodness threatened to destroy him. Mephisto requested that the Black Panther agree to release him from the pact, and the Panther agreed.
In DC Comics' Underworld Unleashed, the Trickster, in a Heel Face Turn, managed to scam the Devil.

Literature

In the backstory of David Eddings' The Belgariad, the prophet Gorim managed to pull a Gandhi Gambit on UL, who is essentially the Father of all the Gods... originally, he didn't want ANYTHING to do with that whole 'creation' shenanigan that his kids was cooking up, but after all of the Gods had chosen their People, there were some humans left over - the unchosen, who languished without a god... and, well, Gorim basically managed to shame UL himself into becoming their God (and the God of all monsters as well). Fairly impressive, overall.
- And he did it basically by sitting there and waiting.
  - For several hundred years. The mention of it came at the time when Belgarath and his Master (One of those gods behind the creation scheme) were unable to find UL and his people. Belgarath wonders if he perhaps abandoned them again since the new Gorim was particularly irritating.
In the Uplift series, every scam Earth clan tries to pull on the ancient, Sufficiently Advanced Aliens backfires, until the very end of the series when they manage a doozy... accidentally, with a lie so ridiculous they never expected it to do more than buy them a few seconds.
- Even more impressively, what actually clinched the deal wasn't a deception at all, but the enemy misinterpreting a genuine offer of surrender.
Happens to an extent in The Silmarillion- specifically, the story of the Downfall of Numenor, where Sauron essentially manipulates Eru Illuvitar into destroying the Numenorean empire for him. Also subverted in that Sauron only intended for the Valar to get involved, and the amount of power Illuvitar was packing was enough to kill Sauron as well. Of course as anyone who's read The Lord Of The Rings could tell you, Sauron came Back From The Dead, and at any rate it's impressive to make God into your Xanatos Sucker in a 'verse where God is both competent and good.
- Considering that Numenor was already corrupted before Sauron began to influence them, Numenor's fall is just deserts.
In the second book of the Xanth series, Bink wonders if his magical talent of bizarre luck preventing him from ever being hurt by magic actually manipulated events so that the Source of All Magic the demon Xanth decided to play nice in the end and not destroy everything.
Obligatory Discworld example: Cohen the Barbarian has to roll a 7 with one six-sided die. Naturally, being a Hero, he takes the most awesome method and cuts the die in two, rolling a 7 and cheating Fate at the same time.
In one short story by Brian Jacques (yes, That one), a kid traded his soul so he could lie better, and ended up convincing the devil he's illiterate, voiding their soul contract, and got an Angel to agree to come over to his house for cake - the latter implying he wasn't using his supernaturally-enhanced lying skills.
In the Larry Niven short story "Convergent Series", a man deals with a demon he's accidentally summoned by asking him to freeze time for a bit, then redrawing the summoning pentagram on the demon's stomach.
Another short story, "That Hellbound Train", features a protagonist who just barely manages to outwit Satan after trading his soul for a watch that can stop time. He goes through his entire life, never finding the perfect moment, and as he's dying the Devil tells him that he's given the same watch away dozens of times. As he rides the titular train, he realizes that a) everyone is partying like it's their last chance, because it is and b) Satan hasn't taken the watch yet!

Live Action TV

Happened in Star Trek multiple times, with godlike beings practically being a franchise staple.
The Seventh Doctor vs. the Gods of Ragnarok in "The Greatest Show in the Galaxy."

Film

Mythology

Sisyphus pulled this off for a little while. He was punished for it, though.
A lot of stories involving deals with the Devil have the Devil being tricked out of getting his side of the deal.
Jack of the Jack O'Lantern tale in Irish folklore also scammed the Devil. He got the Devil to agree not to take his soul after scamming him twice. When he died, though, he was too wicked for Heaven and the Devil upheld his bargain not to claim his soul. The Devil gave him a glowing coal and wished him the best roaming the Earth. Jack later put the coal in a gourd and created his lantern.

Tabletop Games

In the DungeonsAndDragons optional sourcebook, the Tome of Magic, one of the vestiges (beings that exist outside of reality) was originally a prolific thief (possibly a kleptomaniac) who, upon his deathbed, renounced all of the theft he had done in life, thus effectively stealing his very soul out of the hands of Olidammara, deity of thieves as a way of proving himself the most worthy of the deity's devotion. Olidammara was pissed at first, but then realised the sheer audacity of his actions and was about to accept him with open arms (and minimal chance of pickpocketing) when the deity realised that accepting his soul in the afterlife would prevent his incredible theft. Since Olidammara didn't want the soul to go to anyone else, the thief's soul ended up outside of all known forms of reality; existing in no plane or identifiable location beyond 'nowhere'. This Troper thinks the whole 'steal your own soul from a god' plan needed a bit more thinking through.
- Considering that while one is using this vestige - Andromalius, the Repentant Rogue - one is prohibited from theft, it appears Andromalius agrees with you on that one.
In Legend Of The Five Rings, the big bad evil god, Fu Leng, fell to this at the hands of Naseru, who eventually became the Emperor. When Naseru and his siblings lead a Big Damn Heroes moment in an attack on Fu Leng's stronghold in the Shadowlands to prevent him from taking over the heavens, while his uber-powered brothers and sister were slaying abominations left and right, Naseru, being a courtier, walked up to Daigotsu, leader of Fu Leng's forces in the material world, and began talking to him. The resulting conversation allowed Naseru to trick Fu Leng into temporarily withdrawing his dependence on Daigotsu, which gave the other gods and dead heroes enough time to take him down and send him back to hell.

Web Comics

Order Of The Stick: This is Redcloak's ultimate goal, to harness the power of The Snarl and hold the world hostage so he can negotiate with the pantheon of gods to get a better deal for the race of Goblins in-universe, rather than just serving as sources of XP for adventurers.
8-Bit Theater: Thief outsmarting Trickster God Raven.
Chicanery begins with Pokey having just embezzled Giygas' $44,000,000 retirement fund.
Ayanah in PAWN is implied to be doing this to Baalah, with unfortunate implications.

Video Games

Probably the most clever of them all, Lilette from Grim Grimoire tricking a very powerful demon into leaving the human it's possessing by asking for a wish from it at the cost of her soul, and then wishing for the demon to DEVOTE ITSELF TO GOD. Needless to say, the demon refuses... which sends it back to Hell.
While not supernatural beings per se, the Scrin from Command and Conquer are Sufficiently Advanced Aliens with psychic powers and access to exotic, Tiberium-powered technologies. They are led to believe by Kane that the civilisation on Earth has collapsed and that Earth is ripe for Tiberium mining. Not so much. By the time the Scrin realise they've been suckered to landing on Earth, they are already having their asses handed to them by Nod and GDI alike (and the two won't even stop fighting each other to fight the Scrin).
The plot of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is essentially Dr. Doom making a Chain Of Deals that winds up suckering or screwing over most of the other villains in the universe, including gods like Loki, Mephisto, and Odin.
This is the goal of The Emperor in Dissidia, who plans on living forever and manipulating the gods themselves to become something more than them.
In Ever 17, the whole point of You'haru and Kaburaki's gambit is to trick a 4D being called Blick Winkel into believing that the events of 2017 and 2034 are one and the same. The clincher? It was Blick Winkel himself who set up the whole gambit to do that.

Western Animation

Xanatos (of course) did that to Puck, when he chose Owen Burnett, instead of a wish, forcing Puck to play human for the rest of Xanatos' life.
- Of course, Puck himself seems impressed that Xanatos chose Owen instead of, say, immortality, and overall is quite content with his lot. It's also worth noting that he offered Xanatos the option of choosing Owen deliberately, more to see what he would do than anything else. And it's said explicitly that Puck only stays because he was impressed and amused by the choice.
  - Puck pretty much shot himself in the foot with that one; why did he think a Magnificent Bastard like Xanatos would even consider taking a wish from a Literal Genie when he could have an Almighty Janitor as his 100% loyal servant for life?
  - Puck seems to enjoy a chance to try Playing Against Type as Owen. As he said himself: "The Puck has played many roles, but never before the Straight Man."
I believe the defeat of the Robot Devil in Futurama should be considered partly this, and partly Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu.

Real Life

The mathematician and strident atheist G. H. Hardy is said to have tried this. When traveling across the ocean by boat, he got into a fierce storm that stood a good chance of sinking the boat, so he sent a telegraph to his colleague Littlewood in Cambridge saying that he had proved Fermat's Last Theorem. The storm subsided, and he arrived safely in England at which point he revealed that he hadn't really proved it, and had just blackmailed God by ensuring if the storm had killed him he would have become famous for dying before the proof was known (as Fermat was famous for himself) and thus God would have made his enemy famous.