History Main / PoorPredictableRock

** Played VERY straight in the battle between Pegasus and Kaiba in Duelist Kingdom. Pegasus took advantage of the fact that Kaiba was famous for his Blue-Eyes White Dragon by using Dragon Capture Jar and Dragon Piper. The second is that he also knew that Kaiba's entire deck is built with overly powerful monsters so his reversal of the Crush Card Virus essentially blasted Kaiba's entire strategy to pieces. Even without his Mind Scan, it's clear that Pegasus already hard the cards to deal with Kaiba's deck.

* In the billiards (you know, pool) manga ''Manga/{{Breakshot}}'', practically every opposing player has one major strength and sticks to it 90% of the time. Jimmy and Oki's masse shots, Aono's center shots, Ryoji's shotgun shot (which, as it happens, is actually prety ''un''predictable in its effect, but he's still guaranteed to use it), Jeffrey's miracle shot, and main character Chinmi himself is inordinately fond of jump shots.

[[folder:Film - Live Action]]

[[folder:Live Action Television]]

* [[spoiler:Subverted hard]] in ''Anime/PokemonJourneysTheSeries''. When going up against a team of Pokémon poachers trying to capture the legendary Pokémon Suicune, Go goes into the battle armed with a newly-caught Drowzee specifically to exploit its [[ElementalRockPaperScissors type advantage]] against the poachers' stable of all Poison-type creatures. This goes as planned until the leader of the poachers turns this on its head by revealing he had a Houndoom (part-Dark-type and thus [[NoSell completely immune]] to the Psychic-type Drowzee), which goes to town on the poor Drowzee until Ash arrives on the scene with his Pikachu and Lucario to back Go up.

* ''Fanfic/IAmNotDoneMHA'': In the TournamentArc, Izuku knows very well that Bakugou is about [[HavingABlast his explosions]] and getting up close and personal so he can set them off in his opponent's face and plans accordingly. [[spoiler:Bakugou gets especially brutal when he figures out what Izuku is doing and ends up [[EyeScream costing Izuku an eye]]. [[PyrrhicVictory Izuku still wins]].]]

* ''Fanfic/IAmNotDoneMHA'': In the TournamentArc, Izuku knows very well that Bakugou is about [[HavingABlast his explosions]] and getting up close and personal so he can set them off in his opponent's face and plans accordingly. [[spoiler:Bakugou gets especially brutal when he figures out what Izuku is doing and ends up [[EyeScream costing Izuku an eye]].]]

*** Similarly in season 4, a younger student named Sorano tries to counter Judai's Fusion strategy with Horus the Black Flame Dragon [=LV8=] which negates and destroys all of Judai's Spell Cards. However, Judai's deck evolved so much since season 1 that he doesn't need Spell Cards to use Fusion Monsters anymore. So he beats Horus up with good old Neos.

*** Player characters learn of a white dragon, stock up and raid the lair... and it turns out to be a ''[[{{Dracolich}} wight]]'' [[IncrediblyLamePun dragon]] of another color.

** ''Anime/YuGiOhZEXAL'': Kaito being a Number Hunter, his Galaxy-Eyes monsters are designed to counter Xyz Monsters, a type of monster that literally everyone (barring one old retro man) has in their Extra Decks, even robots do.

** Sometimes canny [[OurDragonsAreDifferent dragons]] in ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' campaigns will use ColorCodedForYourConvenience to their advantage like this, impersonating other dragon types with magic, metabreath feats or good ol' paint.
* Spoofed in ''Webcomic/{{Nodwick}}'' after the party trashes a fire sorceress with bright red robes calling herself princess of flame or some such. After a remark by Nodwick that she couldn't have made her weakness any more obvious if she tried, his party members visit the next villain's tailor ahead of time to hear about the wonderfull snow-white dress he made for her.

* In VideoGame/GoldenSun, there are entire societies that have one of the 4 prime elements as their standard power. This isn't a ''choice'' of the characters, more something they have to deal with. But as a result, the [[BigBad Big Bads]] of the first two games are Proxians, who are all Mars (fire) adepts, and hence weak to Mercury (water) adepts. This becomes a plot point when the first game's party is able to beat their vastly stronger opponent simply because they were on top of Mercury Lighthouse, which weakened fire's power and boosted water's.

Interestingly in actual RockPaperScissors, throwing the same hand every time is a valid tactic against an inexpert opponent. Basically nobody expects a player to play the same hand twice or more. There are even [[http://www.worldrps.com/how-to-beat-anyone-at-rock-paper-scissors names for the tactic, among those who care about such things]]. Also, rock is statistically the most used play, particularly among beginners.

* ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'': During one host segment from ''The Beatniks'', Joel takes advantage of the fact that both Crow and Servo have inanimate arms and hands to constantly defeat them at Rock Paper Scissors. Joel then learns the hard way that "Gypsy crushes Joel."

* ''Series/CowboyBebop2021''. In "Darkside Tango", Spike plays RockPaperScissors with Faye, but she prefers variations like Hunter-Bear-Ninja and Foot-Cockroach-Atomic Bomb. Spike insists they do the old school version, and wins because by this time he's worked out that Faye always picks the last of the three.

** Of course, in [[spoiler: the battle with [[BonusBoss Margaret]] in ''VideoGame/{{Persona 4}}'', a skilled Soloist can take advantage of this to get free heals!]]

* In ''Videogame/{{Mardek}}'' powerful highly elementally aligned monsters have a spell, Inversion (of that element), which deals damage to the party based on how much elemental resistance they have to that element. Come in with 110% resistance to fire? Then Inversion: Fire does 110% of your health as damage. Due to this, it's best to apply a moderate degree of elemental resistance in these battles. Also played straight with [[BonusBoss the Security Demon and Animus]], both of which are almost unbeatable normally, but can be beaten with a particular trick that neutralizes much of their power.

** Worth noting is that the entire reason Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock exists is because of this trope; Sheldon pulled out a statistic about how players familiar with each other will keep choosing the same options, either tying or disrupting the game and that the much more complicated RPSLS will fix the problem by allowing more options.[[note]][[http://www.samkass.com/theories/RPSSL.html Rock Paper Scissors Spock Lizard]] [[AluminumChristmasTrees existed before]] ''The Big Bang Theory''. Creator Sam Kass was even given a ShoutOut at least once: "All hail Sam Kass".[[/note]] As you can see above, it doesn't quite work out that way.

* ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'': During one host segment from ''The Beatniks'', Joel takes advantage of the fact that both Crow and Servo have inanimate arms and hands to constantly defeat them at Rock Paper Scissors. Joel then learns the hard way that "[[MamaBear Gypsy]] [[BerserkButton crushes]] Joel."

* ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'': During one host segment from ''The Beatniks'', Joel takes advantage of the fact that both Crow and Servo have inanimate arms and hands to constantly defeat them at Rock Paper Scissors. Joel then learns the hard way that "Gypsy crushes Joel."

* ''Series/CowboyBebop2021''. In "Darkside Tango", Spike plays RockPaperScissors with Faye, but she prefers like Hunter-Bear-Ninja and Foot-Cockroach-Atomic Bomb. Spike insists they do the old school version, and wins because by this time he's worked out that Faye always picks the last of the three.

* In ''Fanfic/TheWeaverOption'' a Sons of Horus warband lands on Cadia but the defending Warmaster is largely unconcerned. While extremely dangerous in combat, tactically they are easy to predict as they will ''always'' start an attack with a decapitation strike on the enemy leadership. He is able to counter their assault and forces the warband to flee Cadia.

** During the duel between Yami Yugi and Yami Marik, Yami Marik uses the strategy to revive Ra so many times, that Yugi and Yami Yugi have divised a plan to not only get rid of Ra, but also defeat him without risking the life of the less evil Marik.

** The Battel City duel between Yami Yugi and Kaiba has them predicting each other's move multiple times because they have known each other so well, but Kaiba has been predictable way too many times, seen as the vast number of times Yami Yugi has been prepared to counter Kaiba's numerous tactics, ultimately winning the duel.

* In ''Anime/InuYasha'', Myroku's main source of attack is his exceedingly powerful [[WeaponsThatSuck Wind Tunnel]]. Unfortunately for him pretty much everyone else knows this, and also knows that he can't use it on demon wasps without getting poisoned by them. So he can frequently be shut out of a fight simply by having a foe bring a nest of demon wasps, rendering him unable to do anything besides hit enemies with his staff (not a viable long-term strategy against demons).

* ''Manga/DragonBall'': During the finale of the 21st Tenkaichi Budokai, Goku attempts to use his Rock-Paper-Scissors technique on Jackie Chun. Since Jackie Chun is familiar with the technique, he knows how to counter each attack, which is also telegraphed by the name of the attacks. So Goku uses it again...but he purposely says the wrong attack name to catch Jackie Chun off-guard and hits him with "Rock" while shouting "Paper".

*** Subverted with Aporia vs Z-One. Aporia is aware of Z-One's so-called ace monster (a Time God ([[DubNameChange Timelord]])), and thus divised a strategy to win the duel without dealing against said ace monster in a battle. He fails miserably because Z-One's "ace monster" is ''not'' his ace monster at all and he has ''nine'' other cards that are very similar to it, just with one different effect for each of them, while his true ace monster Sephylon is much more powerful than the 10 Time Gods serving under it.

** Played VERY straight in the battle between Pegasus and Kaiba in Duelist Kingdom. Pegasus took advantage of the fact that Kaiba was famous for his Blue-Eyes White Dragon by using Dragon Capture Jar and Dragon Piper. The second is that he also knew that Kaiba's entire deck is built with overly powerful monsters so his reversal of the Crush Card Virus essentially blasted Kaiba's entire strategy to pieces.

** ''Anime/YuGiOhGX'': Misawa tries to shut-down Judai's Fusion strategy by prohibiting him from playing Polymerization, even though Judai has other cards to perform Fusion Summons. It's not enough, thanks to Judai's [[WebVideo/YuGiOhGXTheAbridgedSeries plot device cards]], he wins without Fusions.
*** Similarly in season 4, a younger student tries to counter Judai's Fusion strategy with Horus the Black Flame Dragon [=LV8=] which negates and destroys all of Judai's Spell Cards. However, Judai's deck evolved so much since season 1 that he doesn't need Spell Cards to use Fusion Monsters anymore. So he beats Horus up with good old Neos.
** ''Anime/YuGiOh5Ds'': Team New World uses Meklords, an archetype that absorb Synchro Monsters, a type of monsters that almost ''everyone'' in ''5D's'' uses, and the Meklords are hard to counter.

* Subverted in ''Manga/{{Bastard}}'' where a fire djinn laughs that Dark Schneider, a Fire Wizard, can't beat him since he only has fire spells. Dark Schneider [[WhenAllYouHaveIsAHammer uses a spell hotter than the sun]] to extinguish him.