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"It's a blindfold kick back type of a game Called the Kansas City Shuffle Whereas you look left and they fall right Into the Kansas City Shuffle. Its a they think you think they don't know type of Kansas city hustle Where you take your time, wait your turn and hang them up and out to dry" —>— Bennie Moten, "The Kansas City Shuffle"
The Kansas City Shuffle is a type of gambit where everything relies on misdirection and disinformation. The crux of the thing is that 'you look left and they fall right': the pawns involved are not working in the same direction that they would if they knew the truth that The Chessmaster was keeping from them. My name is Candle Jack, I don't write in black, it's part of my Kansas City Shuffle The information being kept from them can vary. It can be the true motivation and desires of the chessmaster, it could be the presence of other players, or could be the identity of the plotter or even their existence. They call my name, but with rope and a duffel sack, they're calling for trouble. The audience may or may not be in on the secret themselves. If they are then it can lead to a build up of Dramatic Irony but often the truth can be saved to The Reveal after the audience has been immersed in the intricacies of the apparent plot so that the shock to the character and the audience match. See, you fear shadows but I'm too bright, I hit submit after you type It can very often overlap with a Batman Gambit when the plotter relies on the pawns' reactions to a piece of information but not always; for instance, when information is merely withheld so that the pawn will not react to it, you do not have the manipulation of behaviour that the Batman Gambit requires. It is much rarer to have an overlap with the Xanatos Gambit since if the truth is revealed the plan will fail with no backup. The reason the disinformation is there in the first place is because the plotter relies so much on a specific course of action and must have the pawns under control. So one quickstep is all it takes to fall into a Kansas City Shuffle Of course, if the audience only gets the reveal right at the end we may never truly know how the plan was meant to work, how coolly the player kept his control. We can't truly evaluate what type of gambit they were employing. All we can do is sit back and grin at the Magnificent Bastard.
Trope Namer is the song The Kansas City Shuffle (see quote above) explained in detail in the movie Lucky Number Slevin. For those of you not from the U.S., Kansas City is actually in Missouri. There is a Kansas City, Kansas, (It's right across the river) but it's much smaller and usually not what people are talking about when they mention a Kansas City. It throws off many Americans, too. This is actually a near perfect physical metaphore, as "when they look on one side of the river, you're on the other". May be employed by means of a Revealing Coverup.
Compare Massive Multiplayer Scam. May involve Reverse Psychology
Warning: Spoilers are to follow.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- The entire plot of Durarara! is basically this.
- In Mahou Sensei Negima, Negi pulls one off: His whole "turn into lighting and beat the crap out of Rakan" was actually meant to distract Rakan so Negi could set up another spell. He then pulled out a new upgrade solely so Rakan would attack him with full power. When he does, Negi uses the spell he set up earlier to absorb Rakan's attack and shoot it back at him.
- In Silent Sinner in Blue, Yukari pulls off a doozy, "trying" to enlist the help of the other youkai for her plan to invade the Lunar Capital with the expectation that Remilia will want to try to beat her there instead, providing a decoy for her to covertly use her boundary powers to infiltrate the Capital. It turns out Yukari had planned even further ahead, and knowing that there were two guardians, set herself up to be a second decoy, while Yuyuko and Youmu were the ones who actually managed to infiltrate the Lunar Palace to steal from it.
- In Outlaw Star episode 14 (Final Countdown), the villain Crackerjack pulls a Kansas City Shuffle.
- Liar Game revolves around its eponymous tournament of conmen. Needless to say, those who aren't a master of some flavor of gambit are either pawns or casualties.
Comic Books
- Bane's plan in the Batman "Knightfall" saga. Batman believes the mass-breakout at Arkham was meant to allow the escapees to conduct some particular plot, but the whole point is just to have Batman wear himself out chasing them all over Gotham, so that Bane can eventually ambush the hero at his weakest and defeat him.
- In the old Marvel GI Joe comics, Cobra builds an impregnable fortress at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, where their latest nefarious scheme is allegedly being run from. The world faces devastation if Cobra's plan isn't stopped, so the United States Air Force preps a nuclear bomb to crack the Cobra egg. However, at the last moment, Doc theorizes that millions of tons of conventional bombs should equal one nuke, so every USAF plane available drops conventional explosives on top of the fortress, all with delayed detonation so they go up at the same time. Turns out, not only was the fortress empty, it was built on top of a fault line, and the explosion triggers an earthquake that causes a new landmass to form in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico—which Cobra quickly occupies. Yes, it was all an elaborate ploy to get the U.S. military to create Cobra Island.
Film
- The Trope Namer comes from Lucky Number Slevin which uses "Kansas City Shuffle" as a code for a type of plan that Mr. Goodkat enacts, which involves Slevin being mistaken for Nick Fisher and owing money to the Boss and the Rabbi, while Slevin himself and Goodkat engineered it all as revenge for Slevin's family that the Boss and the Rabbi killed twenty years ago.
- Mickey the traveller in Snatch is a gypsy with incredible boxing skills. He engineers a fight in which he is ordered by the men who killed his mother to lose intentionally for a large reward. He drags out the fight to the length he's been asked to, then promptly knocks out his opponent with a single punch. Dragging out the fight lets his comrades get in position to attack the men who killed Mickey's mother, and winning the fight lets him collect all the bets he placed on himself beforehand. Mickey and the travelers end up wealthy, and the bad guys end up dead.
- The Steve Martin film Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
- Saw II - Jigsaw has trapped his victims in a house full of his trademark traps while the police are forced to watch through a video feed from the unknown location. The police either have to find the house through the feed or find Jigsaw directly in another way, picking the time limit in the fastest way. The feed isn't live. The only surviving victim is in fact trapped in the room where the police found the video feed. The other survivor is in fact the true mastermind of the video endeavor, using it to trap the lead detective.
- In Quantum of Solace, it's only about 2/3rds of the way into the movie when we discover that Quantum isn't really after the non-existent oil in Bolivia, but the water instead.
- Inside Man appears to be about a bank robbery, but there are several worrying inconsistencies in the way the robbers act. It's revealed at the end of the film that the bank's founder colluded with the Nazis in World War II, resulting in multiple deaths. The "robbers" are really after items in the bank's safe deposit boxes that will prove his guilt.
- In the 2009 movie Push, in order to avoid an enemy who can see his group's intentions, Nick Grant writes directions for them on cards and then has his own memory wiped, ensuring that no one knows what will happen next.
- In Runaway Jury: The hero, Nicholas Easter, pulls his own Kansas City Shuffle on a smug gun industry employee. He tries his hardest to look like he wants absolutely nothing to do with jury duty for a trial against the gun industry, thereby ensuring him a spot as Juror #9. In reality, he wants revenge on the gun industry for a shooting at his school and the death of his girlfriend's sister. His girlfriend pulls a similar trick by convincing the gun employee to pay her off in hopes of winning the jury.
- The entire plot of The Usual Suspects. Famous twist notwithstanding, it becomes apparent that Keyser Soze was manipulating everyone including the police, starting with the bogus lineup.
- Duplicity - The whole movie is about a pair of ex-spies hired by industrialist Dick Garsik to infiltrate his archrival Howard Tully's company and steal his mysterious new product. The spies, meanwhile, are plotting to betray Garsik (and perhaps each other) and take the product for themselves. The shuffle: Tully has no product. He knew all about the spies, and set up an elaborate hoax to waste their time and make Garsik look foolish. At the end, Garsik is announcing the miraculous new cure for baldness he just "developed" to the world, while the spies' buyer tells them that their "cure" is a worthless formula for skin lotion...
- The 1959 House on Haunted Hill is essentially a whole load of characters going around trying to trap and falling into the traps of others. We can particular point out the trope use in the use of the characters who are playing dead. In Annabelle's case it is a simple misdirection as part of the plot in which she is involved. However when Vincent Price's character reveals himself to have not only been playing dead but also been playing along with his wife's entire plot to just switch out key elements so that it turns back on her, that takes the biscuit.
- Wild Things: The entire scenario, from the opening court scene to Duquette's final dismissal from the force, was Suzy's gambit to get Kelly Van Ryan's trust fund money and get back at Duquette for putting her in juvie, with the added bonus of killing off Kelly, Duquette, and Lombardo (and making everyone think she was dead) so she'd get away with it scot-free.
- Simon Gruber was the Gruber brother who did the Shuffle at least twice in Die Hard 3: First by planting a fake bomb in a school to get the cops away from the Federal Reserve, and second sending John McClane on wild goose chases with everyone thinking he's trying to get him because of his brother, when, again, it's all just a ruse to rob the Fed. Although Simon later reveals that he chose Mc Clane due to the Nakatomi incident, and that he and Hans weren't all that close
- The Ocean's Eleven movies. Every. Single. Time.
- The Dark Knight Saga: In a poetically appropriate way, The Joker is the master of the Batman Gambit. That said, this movie is noteworthy because it seems like it'd be easier to find characters who weren't trying to pull a Kansas City Shuffle.
Literature
Live Action TV
- Done on Dollhouse a lot, but particularly in "Briar Rose."
- Joss seems to love this trope. Other instances that come to mind are:
- "Trash" on Firefly.
- That time Angel pretended to go evil in season 3 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, to get information out of the current Big Bad.
- 24, Season 7 has Tony pulling a very complicated gambit (some of it improvised). He has Jack, Chloe, and Bill convinced that he was running deep cover to try to find General Juma. In truth, he was working for the people manipulating Juma as part of a plot to obtain a biological weapon. He works hard to convince his girlfriend that he deserves admission to the shadowy cabal that has been pulling strings for at least the last three seasons and gets her to arrange a meeting between him and her boss to that end, only to have it turn out that Tony's real plan all this time was to earn enough trust to get a meeting with the boss so he could kill him for ordering the hit on Michelle which killed not only her, but their unborn son at the beginning of Season 5.
- Doctor Who: There is a twist in "Journey's End" when it is revealed that the creation of Doctor 10.5, the meeting and reunion of Donna Noble and the Doctor and Davros trapping all his enemies to the vault are the Xanatos Gambit of Dalek Caan.
- Again in The Pandorica Opens, in which the alliance of aliens 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. There's actually nothing inside; the being to be sealed in the Pandorica is the Doctor, and he makes that a lot easier by showing up.
- In the Spooks episode "One Last Stand", Kurdish terrorists storm the Turkish consulate, demanding the release of their comrades in exchange for their hostages' freedom. This turns out to be a diversion concocted by their leader, rogue spy Johnny Marks, who sends a second team to a bank a few doors down from the Turkish consulate in order to successfully steal not just millions of pounds, but more importantly information on all MI5 and MI6 agents.
- In the episode "Diana", an ex-operative named Angela Wells holds MI5 hostage, threatening to blow them all up along with herself unless they uncover evidence of a conspiracy behind the alleged assassination of Princess Diana (which their boss Harry Pierce is purportedly part of). Wells is eventually talked down and (in accordance with a certain MI5 tradition) allowed to leave unmolested, but they discover afterwards that the whole debacle was a diversion by Wells to mask her theft from MI5 of certain documents related to her real targets, the Royal Family themselves. For their safety, the Royals are evacuated to a secure bunker called Pegasus... just as Wells planned, as she had already spent months beforehand rigging the location with explosives under the guise of an electrician. However, MI5 successfully disarms her rig before hard could be done.
- Hustle. All the time. If it's obvious how the scam works ten minutes in, you can bet your life that's just what The Mark is supposed to think he's supposed to think.
- Leverage, also all the time. The best example would probably be The Second David Job"
- Ditto Mission Impossible.
- In fact, if it's any show built around thieves or con artists or similar, then it's probably assured that it's going to be used nearly all the time.
- The protagonists of FX The Series are often made to carry out one of these by the local police force.
- Sheridan's downright epic scheme in "Rumors, Bargains and Lies".
- Don Draper executes a magnificent one against his self-proclaimed rival Ted Shaw in "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword." During the competition over the Honda Motorcycles account, the Honda execs make certain rules to ensure a level playing field: each agency is given $3000 to make boards and copy—no finished work allowed. Don goes to great lengths to hint that SCDP is going to make a big, expensive spec commercial for Honda (which is finished work and therefore not allowed) convincing Ted Shaw that his firm should do the same. The problem is that SCDP isn't actually making a commercial (leading to a pretty hilarious scene with Peggy riding around an empty set on a Honda motorcycle), Draper's intention being to severely damage Shaw's firm's budget by making them make the big, expensive commercial. Don resigns the Honda account, returning the $3000, on the grounds that Honda had broken its own rules and he could not honorably do business with them. Shaw's firm is now a mess, and while Honda doesn't end up giving anyone their main motorcycle account, SCDP gets a shot at the advertising for their new automotive division. I predict great profits for SCDP in The Seventies...
Video Games
- Garrett of Thief has been the victim of these more than once.
- In Thief: The Dark Project, Garrett (being a thief-for-hire) is easily convinced to loot an artifact for a vast sum of money... then his client reveals it's actually an Artifact Of Doom and that he's the hinted Big Bad in disguise, rips out Garrett's eye for good measure, and runs off to bring about The End Of The World As We Know It. Whoops.
- In Thief II: The Metal Age, Garrett becomes suspicious of one of the sheriff's lieutenants, and follows her until he sees her passing along a letter under suspicious circumstances. Garrett then follows the person who picks up the letter, only to learn after a long pursuit that he was set up by one of the chief minions of the previous game's Big Bad, who needs his skills but couldn't have persuaded him to meet her knowingly.
- In Silent Hill Harry is tricked by Dahlia Gillespie, who tells him, that Alessa is trying to summon the demon. The truth is, that it's Dahlia, who actually wants the "god" to be spawned. She uses Harry to chase and weaken Alessa, so she can perform the ritual.
- Jack in Bioshock is basically dealing with a single huge one throughout the entire game, as he assumes he's being helped by an unknown resident of Rapture named Atlas, but it turns out that this is the alias of Frank Fontaine, all-around villainous gangster, who has been utilizing a code phrase to brainwash you into pretty much every single thing you've done such the start of the game. By that point most of the damage has been done, but some can still be rectified.
- This is the crux of Shuji Ikutsuki's plan in Persona 3. Killing the Full Moon Shadows? That frees Nyx, it doesn't destroy the Dark Hour. He has to trick you into doing it because he has no Persona himself.
Webcomics
- In Order of the Stick, during the invasion of Azure City, Redcloak made it so it looked like there were three Xykons in the battle, with Haley telling everyone it was a shell game. Like in a real shell game, not one of them is the real Xykon.
Haley: A ruse that relies on the target's innate acceptance of the rules as presented to him? Against a league of paladins? Easy money.
Western Animation
- Lex Luthor's plan in Justice League Unlimited - everyone thinks it's to become the President of the United States, but it's actually Brainiac manipulating him into giving him a new body while ruining the League's reputation.
- An episode of Superfriends had Mr. Mxyzptlk pretend to try to kill the Justice League, while actually tricking them into making a potion he needed. Superman figured out the ploy, and at the last second he changed one of the ingredients, ruining the potion and tricking Mxyzptlk into banishing himself once more.
- In one episode of Conan The Adventurer, Rathamon allowed Conan to escape with the Distressed Damsel and think that capturing her was his real plan, rather then his true goal of unleashing a Sealed Evil In A Can.
- Niko and Ariel pull a great one of these in Galaxy Rangers. Sealed Evil In A Can got loose and took out every one of the Circle of Thought aside from them. For added measure, it captured Zachary, who appears to be Supernaturally Delicious And Nutritious for some reason. After the women battle to the thing's lair and succeeding in pissing it off, Ariel casts a spell to disguise them as each other. The Sealed Evil In A Can proceeds to blow a lot of power fighting what he thinks is Ariel, but is actually Niko. Then, when he's used up so much power on the student, the mentor drops the disguises, and starts laying into the thing. Of course, while it's distracted, Niko pulls out a remote control that activates the captured Zachary's bionics and blasts the thing. For added measure, Ariel quotes the damn thing Sun Tzu while blasting it!
Real Life
- A large amount of Allied effort in World War II was put into misdirection and disinformation. Fake shipyards, navies and battalions would be constructed
 , fake battle plans distributed and armies hidden to keep German attention focused on the wrong places at the wrong time.
- The most awesome bit of Allied intelligence during the war would have to be Operation Fortitude. It was so successful, Hitler figured that the D-Day invasion at Normandy was a feint attack. Within this Operation, the most awesome person may have been Juan Pujol, who set up a fake spy network for the Germans (who funded him, basically handing free money to their enemies), and got awarded the Iron Cross for being such a prolific source of (mis)information for the Wermacht.
- The funny part here is that Erwin Rommel wanted all of the German troops deployed at the exact beaches the Allies would deploy on. However, because he was not popular/trusted enough at the point, only half of the troops were, allowing the Allies' invasion to be successful because the rest of the troops were half-way to Paris at the time. Not an indicator of a Kansas City Shuffle, but rather of incompetence in the highest ranks as Hitler was the one who decided to go against Rommel who had proven himself to be one of the best if not the best general the Third Reich had.
- Some say that Churchill knew about Coventry Blitz from cryptoanalysis teams, but decided that taking any measures would have forced Germany to change encryption schema, which would have been worse.
- This was confirmed by several members of British foreign intelligence going on fifty years later. Read A Man Called Intrepid.
- And then denied by several other members of British intelligence, who pointed out that the key Coventry message wasn't decoded until after the raid. The Public Records Office appears to agree with the second group, but it's almost like no one wants a clear account....
- A year before Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, The Nazis realized they needed to get a major strategic advantage due to the size of Russia's military. To compensate, the Germans went on one of the most successful disinformation campaigns in their history (which is saying something due to how poorly their espionage against the West went). They sent false transmissions, telegraphs, letters, and other communiques impersonating and framing numerous senior officers in the Red Army, and Stalin, being the paranoid Card Carrying Villain that he was, did not bother putting them on trial and purged a sizable chunk of his Officer Corps. When the invasion came a year later, the crippling effect on the chain of command cost the Soviets dearly and they nearly got overrun by the invading Germans due to poor leadership.
- Not that it was really needed after 1934-1937 purges caused by inner politics..
- The Nazis with their attack in the West in May 1940. They came through Belgium and Holland, just like the British and French expected them to, and the British and French advanced to meet them there—only to suffer a giant stomach punch when the real German attack came farther south, through the Ardennes Forest, cutting off over 400,000 Allied troops in the north and winning the campaign at a stroke.
- Which they really should have expected, since the Germans used the exact same attack route during World War I. They probably thought the German tanks wouldn't have been able to navigate the area, but then they got blindsided by it again by the German counterattack that became the Battle of the Bulge. The effects were far less devastating that time, but only because Germany was pretty screwed at that point no matter what they did.
- Um, not quite. The 1914 Schlieffen Plan was a large right flank offensive through the Belgian plains. The Anglo-French forces were expecting a repeat in 1940 of the World War I attack plan, which is how they fell into the trap. The Germans (actually, the Prussians with other German allies) DID take this route in 1871 during the Franco-Prussian War when they crushed the French at Sedan—where they would make their winning breakthrough in 1940 as well. The Battle of the Bulge did use the same route as the 1940 attack, and leaving the Ardennes too lightly defended in 1944 * was* an amazing case of historical blindness.
- The Soviets got theirs back during the Battle of Stalingrad. Zhukov kept just enough supplies and men flowing into the battle to keep it going and prevent the Germans from being able to consolidate, while the reinforcements weren't quite enough to convince them to pull out of the city before the Soviets had sprung their trap with forces the Germans didn't know existed and who had been intentionally kept from the battle.
- A far older example than all of the above:
Sun Tzu: The way of War is a way of Deception.
What do they mean "Self Demonstrating"...?
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