Thirty Xanatos Pileup - Television Tropes & Idioms

Death Note, it's basically over 40 episodes of Xanatos on crack. Despite being 37 episodes long.
Liar Game is interesting with Akiyama vs Yokoya in the third round (the smuggling game). Expect future action between these two in the fourth round.
Ghost In The Shell Stand Alone Complex probably counts, considering that you have to keep up with what's going on all on your own.
- The second season even more, considering that towards the end the villain starts to accidentally play into his own fake roulette, the secondary antagonist turns his intended defeat at the hands of the Big Bad into Ascension To Higher Plane Of Existence and both are foiled by a bunch of Spanners In The Works doing their own thing against everybody's expectations. Whew.
The storyline of Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle has driven so far past this point that it is approaching it a second time, to the point that one troper has actually started making a chart about who's plotting against whom to keep things straight- not that it helps much, given that 201 chapters in and its still not clear. Here's a tip at how convoluted it is. There is only one person in the initial party who is not a spy. That person is not Princess Sakura.
- The fans aren't the only ones who mess up trying to figure things out. By chapter 230, it begins to look like the villain wasn't exactly on top of things- it appears that his ludicrously complex Xanatos Roulette to save a loved one's life is, in fact, what caused her to Heroic Sacrifice. And it is entirely likely that somebody planned this.
End of Evangelion features Keel's plan to Instrumentality perfect mankind by fusing all human souls into one entity being hijacked by Gendo, whose plan to resurrect his dead wife is hijacked by Rei, who wants to give the person she cares for the most, Shinji control over whether or not to have The End Of The World As We Know It, all of which may have been planned by Yui and Fuyutsuki ten years earlier.(Or not.) Sheesh!
There's rarely a major event in Code Geass that doesn't involve several different groups or individuals trying to manipulate things.
- Example: the Chinese Federation arc from the second season. Britannia wants to manipulate the CF for its own ends (which may include goals known only to the Emperor himself). The eunuchs who lead the CF want to gain more power and wealth by marrying their figurehead empress to a Britannian prince. Li Xingke, loyal to the Empress, wants to manipulate the Black Knights into helping him take down the eunuchs. And through all this, Lelouch/Zero wants to get the Empress and CF on his side in his battle with Britannia. Of course, Lelouch (and by extension, Xingke) win in the end.
- Example: During the next-to-last arc, Schneizel's bid for the throne kicks off, while his father advances his decades-running Rage Against The Heavens plot into its final stages, while the Black Knights leadership turns on Zero (without telling the UFN or China) while Lelouch makes a last attempt on his immortal father, while Marianne, who is dead, shows up in someone else's body to put her piece into the game. And they are already intefering with each other, since we have all three Britannian factions fighting.
- In fact, the conclusion of the show itself seems to be turning into a Thirty Xanatos Pileup as the separate and intricate machinations of Lelouch, the Emperor, Schneizel, Suzaku, the Black Knights, and even C.C. and Lelouch's dead mother Marianne all barrel towards each other at breakneck speeds.
- I've heard the plot of Code Geass described as a train wreck where they just keep sending more trains. It gets even more complicated due to the number of characters that switch sides over the course of the show and the underlying moral ambiguity of both sides, making it hard to distinguish between a Heel Face Turn and a Face Heel Turn at times.
- It doesn't help that characters who pretty clearly died return from the dead at the oddest times, so you never know what to expect.
Legend Of Galactic Heroes. Most of the characters fall under this.
Fullmetal Alchemist just gave 4 good guy chessmasters 6 months to plan against the BBEG's culmination of a Xanatos Roulette that began by founding an entire nation that is bigger than any other in the setting currently. The number of smart and powerful pieces and tools each side has boggles the mind.
The various Chessmasters in Gundam 00 are locked in a covert struggle to determine who gets to mold the future of the world into their ideal design, with the constantly-unfolding post-humous Xanatos Roulette of their centuries-deceased predecessor (a plan several of the aforementioned schemers hijacked for their own ends, with mixed results) contributing to the already convoluted web of machinations for which the original planner may have already planned for. It doesn't make it any easier when several of the key characters on all sides of the conflict all believe themselves to be carrying out the original plan.
Detective Conan, volume 26. Dr. Araide's was to make out with Ran, which was ripped apart by Shinichi showing up. Heiji was planning on showing up, dressed as Shinichi, to help him out of Ran's suspicions. This was ruined by Kazuha, who ended up the Spanner In The Works. Haibara's was to have her dress up as his little kid identity, while he tried the prototype antidote, to allude suspicion. Sonoko's, which was spur of the moment, was to get Ran and Shinichi to hook up. This ended up being ruined by the murder. Ran's was using any occurrences to her advantage to get Shinichi to confess, though it wasn't planned out. This was ruined by Haibara's plan. Shinichi was, if you listen to the fans, going to propose to Ran, but this was ruined by the murder. And the second murderer's plans were ruined by Shinichi.
Demonbane has a surprising lack of Chessmasters, considering that there are no less than five different Xanatos Gambits going on throughout the series, some of which are so insane that one wonders how they even thought of their ultimate goals: Vespasianus does a lengthy Xanatos Gambit to take control of Cthulu that nobody's even aware of until it fails, which was undone as part of two Xanatos Gambits: One by a book to revive Cthulu, and one by Augustus (really an avatar of Nyarlathotep) to become Cthulu's heart so that he would have absolute control over Cthulu. Then we have Master Therion, who's powering up Kurou (really an avatar of Nyarlathotep) so that he can kill him 65 million years before he's born. And of course, in the background, we have Ennea manipulating both sides so that the next time the universe is reborn so that the Crapsack Universe isn't quite so crapsack, and finally Nyarlathotep, who's been manipulating everyone since before the dawn of time as part of a plan to unleash Azathoth, who will immediately undo all existence, including Nyarlathotep. Of all of them, only one manages to succeed, and it only manages to succeed in an alternate universe.
The Romance Of The Three Kingdoms reinterpretation The Ravages of Time outdoes just about every other example on this list, with the main characters coming up with incredibly complex, multilayered plans, that often predict each others steps with incredible accuracy, to the point where the characters seem literally psychic. Even the MINOR characters come up with what would normally be seen as competent strategies, but for the more important ones, it gets to the point where you swear that they have to be psychic or able to see into the future. You literally have whole arcs where it's completely a back and forth between plans, with one stategist predicting the other strategist predicting him predicting them etc. It eventually gets so confusing and hard to believe that This Troper finally gave up in dismay.
The end of the Yellow Chapter of Pokémon Special started with villainous Xanatos Gambits, continued into some heroic Xanatos Roulettes, and after Giovanni's apparent Big Damn Heroes moment actually turned out to be part of Lance's plan and Yellow somehow managing to outwit him, this troper finally asked, "Is there anyone in this manga not playing Xanatos Speed Chess?!"

Close Anime and Manga

A storyline in Nodwick, which started with the heroes' attempt to stop an Orc Invasion of two kingdoms, turned into one of these for comedic effect. Especially when revealed that every person in the palace was attempting to control the kingdom one way or another.
Nodwick: Piffany, we'll have even more conspirators to add to the chart.
Piffany: Oh, I gave up when Jules arrived. I'm just going to draw some duckies and bunnies for a while. [1]
- And that exchange came after our heroes learned that everyone in the krutzing KINGDOM had some sort of plan in the works or in motion.
This is most Silver Age Superman comics.
- Those Silver Age Superman's plots/hoaxes are probably really Super-style Batman Gambit.
Transformers: Beast Wars. Not so much in the show (though certainly there too, to some degree), but if you add in the comics you've got probably about thirty people all scheming to their own ends. Looking at it as a whole, you've got Dinobot planning his stuff, mostly trying to keep the golden disks from Megatron, There's Megatron trying to flip the whole of Cybertronian history, there's Tarantulas, who, at the end, you're not entirely sure WHAT side he was on, there's Blackarachnia, who basically schemes whatever way suits her, there's Terrorsaur, who's basically this era's Starscream, only incompetent, Starscream himself comes in for an episode, and schemes as only he can, Ravage, in the end of the second and through most of the third season, The Tripredacus council, and you can bet each of them is a Xanatos on their own. Throwing in the comics, you add Magmatron, Ravage, again, a guy named Shokaract who unknowingly works for yet another Xanatos... I mean... holy hell, it's a wonder anyone's plan worked...
- I just counted, that's 15 Xanatos' and I'm pretty sure I missed someone... I think it's just an inherent part of Predacons to scheme and manipulate, so long as they're more intelligent than someone like Scorpinok.

Close Comic Books

The climax of Curse Of The Golden Flower after a couple Reveal-bombs are dropped ends up being something like this, with several different plots (sometimes literally) crashing into each other, including some that seemingly come out of nowhere.
The first two Pirates Of The Caribbean movies show signs of this. The third one simply explodes with it.
- This particular trooper can follow the third movie only until the scene where "The Black Pearl" changes owners about five times in thirty seconds (where half the cast suddenly reveal they've been plotting against everyone else for the Pearl). Beyond that, he has no hope of following who's manipulating who for what.
- This is probably why the third one is so heavily debated - people didn't expect to have to think about the plot.
- Summed up more or less by Will in the first one:
  Elizabeth: Whose side is Jack on?
  Will: At the moment?
  - Of course, it's quite easy to tell who's side Jack is on. He's on Jack's side.
- All this, keep in mind, with several characters whose whole job is to explain the plot. The cutaway in the three-way duel where the pirates try to work out the various motivations was a high point of the series in this troper's opinion.
- This trooper saw PC 3 probably 10 times, without understanding it, but after seeing PC 2 once more, it all fit.
  - I guess YourMileageMayVary. I understood the third without seeing any of the first two.
The Lady From Shanghai begins with a discussion of how there are no tough guys, only people with an edge and people without one. Everybody thinks they're playing everyone else. The lead curses himself throughout the movie for being such a Xanatos Sucker.
The Big Lebowski. A trophy wife and her nihilist friends stage a kidnapping to squeeze money out of her rich husband to pay off a porn kingpin. The titular husband gives Dude Lebowski an empty briefcase to give the 'kidnappers' while he pockets the ransom money, expecting Dude to screw up to cover his tracks. Various other characters wander into the pileup, including a teenage car thief and Lebowski's angry ultra-feminist daughter, and hilarity ensues.
- Pretty much any film by the Coen Brothers, the most recent being Burn After Reading, fits this trope.
Snatch. Made particularly amusing by the fact that the only two characters who had absolutely no idea about the existence of the diamond that prompted so many characters to try and come up with so many Xanatos Gambits are the ones who end up with it at the end.
The Court Jester was noted by many critics then and now as having an incredibly complicated plot for a '50s comedy, with a bunch of people who all have their own agendas getting in the way of or accidentally assisting each other.
- To expand the example: During the bulk of the film, there are three to four Xanatos Gambits going on at any given moment. The rebels want the key to the secret passage that will let them attack the castle, the princess wants to marry for love, several nobles want more power by having other nobles assassinated, and there's a witch with hypnotic powers who just wants to stay alive. Unfortunately, due to said hypnotic powers, the protagonist is unaware of all but one of these for most of the film.
What's Up Doc. Smith is chasing Jones, the hotel detective and the rich lady and the mobsters are chasing the jewels, Barbra Streisand (Judy) is chasing Ryan O'Neil (Howard), Howard and Hugh are competing for Austin Pendleton's fellowship, and it all culminates in a Chase Scene throughout San Francisco. Seriously, watch it.
Primer. The goals and plans of 5-6 iterations of Aaron and Abe are nearly impossible to keep track of.
Down With Love.
Not sure if this counts as film per se, but The Bloody Olive.
Duplicity, just Duplicity.
- Please Elaborate...

Close Film

Xanatos Gambits happen all the time in Harry Potter, with anywhere from one to several happening per book, usually orchestrated by either Voldemort or Dumbledore.
The entire oeuvre of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky is likely the most famous pioneer of the Thirty Xanatos Pileup. The stupendously complex mindgames played by nearly every character in The Brothers Karamazov require several readings and maybe a college course to comprehend at the basic level. Crime and Punishment plays similar games starring Porifiry Petrovich, whose mindbending "Ah, but if you knew that I knew that one of us was to know" arguments drive Raskolnikov to confession and the reader "seven versts" (4½ miles) from St. Petersburg, to a mental institution referenced in the book.
The ~~first three or so~~ original Dune novels have this. Who is manipulating whom? Everyone and everyone, respectively.
The philosophical themes of War And Peace suggest that history is not so clean, not specific causes and effects, because everyone is in on the massive Thirty Xanatos Pileup that is the clusterfuck of history.
Second Apocalypse has master manipulator Kellhus trying to outwit master manipulator Moënghus, while various lesser schemers and an Ancient Conspiracy make things even more complicated. More discreet schemers may turn up in later revelations.
Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea's Illuminatus! trilogy, whose whole point is a Twenty-Three Thousand Xanatos Pileup in the Conspiracy Kitchen Sink.
James Clavell's Shogun: Oh, where should we even begin? The five members of the Council of Regents are all scheming to displace one another and seize ultimate power as Shogun; Toranaga and Ishido are both trying to manipulate their fellow Councilors into doing the other in over a personal rivalry; the Regent Mother is trying to keep them all divided in order to ensure that her son Yaemon follows in the Taiko's footsteps; Kasigi Yabu is plotting against Toranaga in order to get his spot on the Council as a stepping-stone to his own road to the Shogunate; his nephew Kasigi Omi is, in turn, plotting to overthrow his uncle and take over leadership of the clan; the traditional daimyo are at odds with their Catholic counterparts who are backed by the Jesuits; and the Jesuits themselves are struggling to keep trade open between Japan and the Portuguese colonies and continue to permit their proselytizing while arming the Christian peasantry in preparation for an expected Catholic invasion from the Philippines. Enter John Blackthorne...
Chronicles Of Amber. To the point where after any given ten pages of the book, the reader ends up realizing, "Wow! Everything I knew was wrong! Again!"
The entire plot of A Civil Campaign is basically one of these, as the back cover quote suggests.
Miles has a cunning plan...Unfortunately his clone-brother Mark and his cousin Ivan also have cunning plans.
If you thought Dune was complicated, you really need to read The Dosadi Experiment. You more or less have 800 million people, all of which are currently invovled in some form of Xanatos Roulette against everyone else.
The Ender and Shadow series by Orson Scott Card, especially the latter. Everyone is plotting for power or position or familial recognition or SOMETHING. Some plotters don't even seem to know what they're plotting for but they do know they're good at it!
If you thought the movie adaptation of LA Confidential was complicated, it has nothing on James Ellroy's novel. All kinds of different schemes involving pornography, heroin, murder, and the mob all collide together, and meanwhile three cops are unknowingly all investigating the entire thing. White Jazz is pretty much the same, but squeezed into half the space by the removal of every single word Ellroy considered the slightest bit extraneous at the request of his publisher.
Most of Isaac Asimov's works can be considered big Xanatos Pileups. In fact, literally the entirety of his amalgamated universe (From The Complete Robot through the Empire series to Foundation and Earth) tells the story of R. Daneel Olivaw's enormous plots to aid humanity, going through planetary rebellions (a LOT of them), the foundation of an Empire that eventually collapses to make way for a Foundation plan, that itself makes way for a utopian Second Empire and the union of all minds in the galaxy. The entire timeline encompasses over 30,000 years of human history and requires more Xanatos Gambits than you can shake a stick at. Phew.
- This troper particularly likes The Last Question. The formation of a massive supercomputer creates the conditions necessary for humanity to expand throughout the galaxy and eventually the universe. Throughout the story, humanity keeps asking the supercomputer if there is a way to reverse entropy. Eventually, Man merges with the supercomputer and "lives" through the heat death of the universe, eternally computing a way to reverse entropy. It finishes with the lines "And AC said, "LET THERE BE LIGHT! And there was light—"
The Malazan Book Of The Fallen series. It would be simpler to list those major characters and groups that don't have some sort of master plan working.
Scott Lynch's The Lies Of Locke Lamora and especially its sequel, Red Seas Under Red Skies. Perhaps justified given that the main characters are highly-skilled con men and that the series has been described as a 'fantasy Oceans Eleven'.
Every Robert Ludlum novel (excluding posthumous and co-written works).
Honor Harrington has this trope coming true now with the Star Empire of Manticore, the Andermanni Empire, minor allied partners the Haven Republic, the Solarian League, a dozen or so random neutralish planets and especially Mesa and each of them being subdivided into different factions. Mesa's plans really went off the rails when the Winton family was able to build up a large enough navy to fight off the Peoples of Haven preventing their original plan of Haven forming a pocket empire. Along the way the military technology of the Haven Sector combined with their economic clout mean the Solarian League can't expand too far in that direction without butting heads. Differing OFS Governors have different plans. Some of them in line with Mesa, some of them desperately trying to cut off Mesa. Let's not get started WMG on the Core Worlds of the SL like Beowulf...
Also done to the extreme in A Conspiracy Of Paper. It's starting to get hard to figure out who isn't manipulating the main character...
In the Whateley Universe, Ayla 5: Ayla and the Intelligence Network is one of these. It shifts perspective to show each person setting up their gambits. Also, the characters actually REFER to them as capitalized Xanatos Gambits! And to top it all off... Thurban and Ayla had actually won before the first move was drawn. Thurban, in fact, had purposely leaked the very blackmail conversation that STARTED this mess, solely to make sure everything happened just as planned.
In the Corellian Trilogy, the Sacorrian Triad wants to take over the Corellian Sector, Thrackan Sal-Solo wants to do the same as well as make things unpleasant for Cousin Han, and Leia Solo simply wants to keep the New Republic together, for kriff's sake. And keep Bovo Yagen's sun from going supernova.
The series A Song Of Ice And Fire is nothing but one long Thirty Xanatos Pileup, combining all of the characters' various Xanatos Gambits and Xanatos Roulettes with an Anyone Can Die setting.
Used deliberately in the Mickey Spillane novel "The Twisted Thing". The killer knows that the murder of a wealthy scientist (done for simple revenge) will lead to everyone else plotting against each other to get their hands on his money, thus obscuring the original crime.

Close Literature

Alias becomes a lot like this in its later seasons, when there's the conspiracy behind the conspiracy, and then there's another conspiracy running for x-ty years no-one else knew about, and so on. Also coupled with a few too many instances of the main characters' allegiances being questioned (in most instances even the same characters over and over again) in season 4.
With characters like The Doctor and The Master facing off against one another, it's inevitable that Doctor Who would have this happen now and then. An early example is "The Evil of the Daleks", which is largely made up of a series of interlocking Xanatos Gambits by The Doctor, Professor Waterfield, and the Dalek Emperor. Upon learning about that last one, a stunned Waterfield summarizes the basic idea in a sentence:
Waterfield: While you were doing one thing, they were really making you do another.
- Parodied till it snapped by "The Curse of the Fatal Death". To the point where the first part is nothing but Xanatos Gambits being revealed. "I bribed the architect!"
- In The Trial of a Time Lord, The High Council wanted to cover their tracks, the ~~Boneyard~~ Valeyard wanted to take over, the Master wanted the ~~Farmyard~~Valeyard out of the way, and the Doctor wanted justice to prevail.
- The Doctor Who novel The Doctor Trap has the single greatest Thirty Xanatos Pileup in human history.
They're slightly less Xanatosy than most examples here, but Babylon 5 definitely tries. Every major character has at least one major scheme going on that the other races (hell, often the other members of their own race) don't know about.
G'Kar: Let me pass on to you the one thing I've learned about this place: No one here is exactly what he appears. Not Mollari, not Delenn, not Sinclair... and not me.
- To give a stab at it, every ambassador has their personal agenda, a possible house/clan agenda and then their government's agenda. Then two Sufficiently Advanced Aliens species show up and use these against each other. The episode Signs and Portents starts to show the various plans and goals people are working towards with flashbacks 3 seasons later to this episode showing how the plans come to fruition.
Happens once in a while on Hustle.
Made fun of in the Monty Python skit about "Lemming of the BDA".
The Sarah Connor Chronicles is becoming increasingly complicated, with various players showing up. So far there is: Cameron, the reprogrammed Terminator who is more advanced than others and may have some hidden programming and/or be defective; Cromartie, whose mission is the most straightforward, to kill John Connor; Catherine Weaver, CEO of ZieraCorp and a liquid metal Terminator who recruits Agent Ellison to find another Terminator; as well as Sarah and John, who simply want to stop SkyNet from being made, and then you have the running temporal war between future John Connor's human resistance and SkyNet's time-hopping Terminators as they each try to foil, subvert, or eliminate each other. Each character seems to have their own plans for the future and we don't even know what most of them are.
- Add yet another machine intelligence, hinted to be the real SkyNet, to the mix, and any doubt of this trope being in effect is gone.
Heroes is currently in the middle of one, with about one plot per character.
Survivor has become a veritable junkyard for this trope, with new players and alliances contributing to the ever-growing heap of wreckage.
Prison Break tends to do this at times. ~~Especially season 3~~ Season 3 and 4 go on a rampage with this trope.
An episode in the third season of Arrested Development has each of the characters in the family teaching each other lessons in the form of elaborate scenes they set up using Latino painters who moonlight as actors, sound effects C Ds, and two different amputees.
Kamen Rider Kabuto. A group of sociopaths with powers, a large organization and the bad guys generally have their plans collide several times over the course of the series. Then there's Tendou, who's one step ahead of all that.
Essentially the driving force of every Lost season since Ben Linus showed up. Somehow, it hasn't completely collapsed, mainly because it's more of a 10-Xanatos Pileup than a 30.
Found to a certain extent in the Shield, especially when you get to Season 5 where you have Vic Mackey, Lt Kavanagh, David Aceveda and Shane Vendrell all working their own agendas.

Close Live Action TV

The original World Of Darkness took this almost to the point of parody. The Jyhad in Vampire: The Masquerade is run, depending on your sourcebook, by one of about thirty different sources ranging from Caine to Tzimisce to God, or it may just be a giant practical joke pulled by Malkav through his Hive Mind descendants, or... The New World of Darkness takes a giant step away from this - now there's only a giant chain of conspiracies if the Storyteller says there is.
The various Board Game and Collectible Card Game versions of Illuminati, by Steve Jackson Games, is the Thirty Xanatos Pileup as Beer And Pretzels entertainment. It's inspired by the aforementioned trilogy, so that's not surprising.
Warhammer 40000's Chaos God Tzeentch is unique in that he deliberately creates Thirty Xanatos Pileups. Being a god of change and fundamental disorder, Tzeentch literally engineers his plots and plans to the point where they will outright conflict with one another. Not only is foiling one of his plans probably what he wanted you to do all along, but it probably also set in motion different aspects of seventeen other plans at the same time, any of which might in turn be derailing a dozen other plots by Tzeentch. But mostly he just does it to gleefully watch the pieces go flying everywhere when they crash into each other.
- In fact, considering his portfolio, Tzeentch would be royally screwed if his Roulettes ever came to fruition. Ah, The Irony Is Strong In This One.
  - Not really. If anything ever stops him, that's exactly what he WANTS to happen. He ultimately has won the game before the game began just by existing.
  - Indeed, Tzeentch literally has no goals. If there comes a point in time where his schemes succeed, he's technically failed because change would be no longer taking place. Don't think about that one for too long.
- And you have to take into account that in addition to Tzeentch, the Farseers, the Deceiver, and quite possibly the dead-but-dreaming God Emperor of Humankind are all manipulating each other into Thirty Xanatos Pileups lasting millions of years, which adds a whole new level of WTF-ness.
  - That, or they're all the same person. Unlikely, but I wouldn't put it passed those bastards at Games Workshop. But either way, since Tzeentch outdates them all, it's highly probable he created the others to give powerful faces for each respective race in the future.
  - Not the Deciever, he is both both older than Tzeentch and completely divorced from the Warp.
  - That what he says, are we so sure he's not lying about *his* warp presence?
- The Soul Drinkers chapter were involved in one of these right before their rebellion. An Administratum bureaucrat wanted a space station secured quickly, the Soul Drinkers wanted to reclaim their Chapter's holiest relic, the Adeptus Mechanicus wanted that same relic for back-engineering, and Abraxes, Architect of Fate, Engineer of Time, Daemon Prince of Tzeentch, wanted someone to kill the Daemon Prince Ve'Meth for him. The fact that the Soul Drinkers were shortly declared Excommunicate Traitoris (which includes a shoot-on-sight mandate and the complete deletion of all records pertaining to them) demonstrates how arch-cosmologically it sucks to be in a position where all thirty of the Xanatos Gambits are at your expense.
This is basically the entire point of the board game Diplomacy, which can and frequently does involve seven players running Xanatos Gambits of varying depth and complexity on each other at the same time, making for a mind-blowing maximum potential of a Forty Two Xanatos Pileup. Not surprising, since the game is meant to reflect the Real Life Thirty Xanatos Pileup that led to World War One (see below).
- This troper fondly remembers a game of Diplomacy in which he not only had plots going on with all the other players, but in several cases had multiple plots going on with and against several players and groups of players. It got so convoluted that eventually this troper gave up trying to keep track and just started adding plots for the hell of it to confuse people. It might not have ended well, but it sure was fun.
- This troper has equally fond memories of a game of Diplomacy where he, as Germany, had manipulated Austria and Italy into attacking Turkey, while ostensibly being allied with France against Russia and England. As the game took place over several days, he also had the opportunity to conduct strategy meetings with France, in which he carefully orchestrated the movements of both countries in such a way that he could then give England the exact sequence of moves needed to ensure Germany was far more successful in England than France was. This culminated in a sequence where Germany went from a vestigal state already half occupied by Russia into the largest empire on the board in the space of a year, including the French assisting Germany in capturing Norway on the very same turn Germany claimed Paris. Unfortunately, it later turned out Austria had not been quite so foolish after all, and the game ultimately ended in an Austro-Italian victory. A beautiful game.
Paranoia is designed to be this.
The essence of Chess.
- Which is why Code Geass uses it as such a prominent motif, including in one massively overloaded Xanatos sequence in the first season.
  - However, considering that there are only two players in one game of Chess, it can never be more than a Two Xanatos Pileup.
  - Unless each player has fifteen different plans. And true chessmasters probably do.
Fluxx, a card game where the rules are part of playing the game. There are four types of cards: rules that dictate how the game is played at that particular moment, goals that describe how a player might win, keepers that are usually collected to fulfill a goal, and actions that do things like allow played rules and goals to be revoked. Gameplay is thus a crapshoot involving either attempts to arrive at the current goal, or attempts to change the system. Depending on the goal, winning can be as simple a matter as having ten cards in your hand, to making toast by having the Bread card and the Toaster card. Winning is also a matter of making sure that cards that you play don't immediately benefit another player.
- Some players positively revel in the Xanatos gambit aspects and play a dizzying array of contradictory and/or complicated rules to cover what they're actually trying to get done.
As a general rule of thumb, any creature that has a lifespan greater than that of an average human being in Eberron is a Chessmaster. You have at least five entire organisations made up entirely of these. They don't get along. At least three of them are practically immortal and pull Xanatos Gambits that can take centuries to unfold. One of them exists on another plane of existence where time is greatly slowed relative to the Material Plane, a fact they frequently use to spend weeks planning their next move while only a few hours pass in the real world. And if that's not bad enough, you've got the mortal Magnificent Bastards to deal with, who may not have goals as lofty as complete cosmic domination but are still spinning their dangerous schemes none the less.
Planescape: More mysteries than you can shake a stick at, more conspiracies than you can imagine. We have demon lords of all shapes and sizes all plotting against each other and their celestial counterparts. We have the Factions and the Lady of Pain and well, basically everyone is plotting against everyone else, or claiming to manipulate everyone else. The module Faction War is a spectacular example of what happens when these collide...
Similarily the Ravenloft campaign setting. The Grand Conjuction series ended up in a three-way Xanatos pileup between Azalin, Strahd and Inajira, all of this possibly orchestrated by the mad seer Hyksosa...
Shadowrun. You've got the AAA megacorps scheming to consolidate and expand their power, the AA corps scheming to become AA As, and the governments of the world trying desperately to hold on to whatever power they have left. And then there's the dragons... and the insect spirits... and a million other entities all trying to control everything. And you're a rag-tag group of freelance covert-ops mercenaries caught in the middle of it all, offering your services to the highest bidder. Sound like fun? You don't know the half of it, chummer.

Close Tabletop Games

Xenogears.
- Xenosaga, Xenogears' "sister series," may at first appear to follow this formula as both Wilhem and Yuriev are running Xanatos gambits, but it's ultimately the former who is the beginning and the ending of everything going on (and pretty clear of it relatively early on).
An attempt to explain Chrono Cross: Essentially, all the kingdoms fighting are either being manipulated by Lynx (who is the representation of Fate, the Insane Computer), or the Dragon Gods, who are Gaias Vengeance. But wait! It turns out that the power they are attempting to control is manipulating both of them. But wait again! The original cast of Chrono Trigger (knowing that they would have to appear that they were manipulated to the point of dying), working with the spirit of Schala (who is manipulating her reincarnated self), and the Guru of Time were manipulating everyone in order to create a situation where the Cosmic Keystones of two different Alternate Universes break and then fuse, thus creating the weapon to kill the real Time Devourer, Lavos, Deader Than Dead. Whew!
- In short, in order to create a "weapon" to defeat Lavos; a force of Science and a force of Nature had to be allowed to take power (which required countless multiverse mix and matching) and then fail in such a way that they shatter the Cosmic Keystone in two different timelines. Then these two Cosmic Keystone are fused together. By using it and the "Song of Time", the unkillable Time Devourer who threatens to erase all of reality is neutralized; and the soul that it imprisoned/was powered by was freed. Entire timelines and civilizations had to rise and fall to bring the specific set of circumstances to enable this; given the ghosts dialogue, it seems apparent that the Chrono Trigger cast had been told that they had to die in order to set up the circumstances.
The ending of Metal Gear Solid 2. Some of the characters may have been manipulated by others, and don't even get us started on where Revolver Ocelot falls.
- Even then, they may all have been manipulated (and are possibly still being manipulated) by the Patriots, the Philosophers, EVA, or Big Boss himself, in a posthumous Xanatos Gambit beginning in the very first Metal Gear for the MSX. And one or several of these parties might even be manipulating the others into manipulating them.
- Metal Gear Solid 4 explains everything by retconning the backstory of one master manipulator, Major Zero (the "colonel" role from MGS 3), and revealing Revolver Ocelot's motivation: to free the world from The Patriots from within..
Half the named characters in Final Fantasy Tactics are trying to manipulate the other half, and each other. By the end of the game, the pileup has been cleaned as they start killing each other off and Delita tricks Ramza into killing off his remaining rivals.
- Let's see if I can write this one out:
- The king's son and the vassal are duking it out to see who succeeds, as the king is on his deathbed.
- The Church wants the royal armies to equally waste each other so the Church can claim supremacy and "save" the populace from war.
- Demonic Invaders are passing Mineral Mac Guffin to each army, corrupting their members and hoping to resurrect their dark god.
- Vormav is supposedly working for the church, but is actually infiltrating it on behalf of the demonic invaders they unknowingly worship.
- Delita is a triple agent within both successor's armies and the church. He wants them all dead so he can become the new king. He may or may not know about the demons, but he's sure to let Ramza handle the rest.
- Ramza's goal is simple: keep kicking ass until he gets his sister back. Oh, and repel demons, that's a nice idea too.
The Marathon series has a few, With Durandal playing Tycho to get his mits on the main Phor ship, Tycho messing with the Phor for revenge, and Thoth trying to balance all the factions out. And you get to be every single one of their errand boys. Until the end...
The World Ends With You: Joshua, Hanekoma, Minamimoto, Konishi, and Kitaniji all have their own respective gambits. The ending doesn't even make it very clear whose gambits succeeded or failed. Konishi definitely failed, due to being erased by Neku; Kitaniji got erased but partially succeeded, as Shibuya still exists; Minamimoto was found under a pile of his own garbage (inverting Never Found Th Body, the fact that his body stayed while everyone else that died disappeared has lead plenty to think he survived) and there's not even a footnote giving any more information, though he was still alive prior to Konishi's erasure (which probably means he'll be back in a sequel); Joshua's plan to get the ultimate proxy in his game with Kitaniji worked (i.e. Neku), though whether he had any plan beyond that is unknown, and Mr. Hanekoma... He's obviously saving the results of his for the sequel, as this troper didn't even realize Hanekoma had a gambit going until he read this page...
- The Secret Reports clarify some things: Hanekoma came out on top. He played Minamimato as a total Xanatos Sucker (so Zetta stupid), mentions he achieves his goals, that everyone was necessary for his schemes (apparently he somehow knew Beat would Heel Face back to Neku), and he managed to educate Neku, change Joshua's mind and avoid Shibuya being destroyed. Kitanjii achieved his goal of saving Shibuya, but his actual plan of brainwashing everyone and killing Joshua's proxy failed (although he came damn close). Joshua succeeded in getting his ultimate proxy, but did not anticipate Neku's change in character. For everyone, something they failed to anticipate happened and messed up their plans, though some of them still got their wishes in the end. Except for Hanekoma, for whom everything went just as planned.
City Of Heroes and its sister game, City Of Villains. Trying to figure out the alignment and sponsors of the various villain groups can require a multipage org chart. Nemesis is behind a lot of it in the end, but the lower rankings have so much intergroup conflict that figuring this out can be tricky. The Rikti, Council, Arachnos, Carnies, Malta, hero groups, and a dozen other villains also have their own complicated plans, although more often than not they all originate or react to the same plans.
- Lampshaded when the devs added "tips" in the loading screens, including one which reads "It's all a Nemesis plot," and another which states "It's not all a Nemesis plot."
The final cases in each of the games in the Ace Attorney series tend to be more complicated than the three or four that precede them, but the third game's went far enough that this troper burst out in a lamentation borrowed from Yahtzee's review of Metal Gear Solid 4: "Oh Christ, I can't go on! This shit is bananas!" - when he was only about three-quarters of the way through.
Legacy Of Kain... Where do you start? When Kain comments that "Nosgoth's great manipulator" is himself just a plaything, he's barely scratching the surface.
- To quote Raziel in Legacy of Kain Defiance: "What game is this, where every player on the board claims the same pawn?"
- Raziel is literally the only person who isn't manipulating anyone.
Final Fantasy XII: Ashe is plotting to take her kingdom back, Vossler seems to be helping her, but is in fact plotting with Vayne while hoping that Vayne's little brother Larsa will eventually help Ashe's ambitions, Balthier is helping her in order to settle the score with his father, Ba'Gamnan is plotting to kill Balthier, Vayne is plotting to become the next emperor, dissolve the senate, destroy the the resistance led by Ashe and start a war against Rosaria, Gabranth is used by Genre Savvy Emperor Gramis against Vayne, then used by Vayne against Judge Magister Drace, who did not like all the plotting, The Arcadian senate is plotting against Vayne, Cid is plotting with Vayne and Venat in order to fulfill his ambitions and screw the Occurias along the way, then we have Occuria's king Gerrun who's plotting against everyone and who tries to turn Ashe into his willing puppet, Ondore who is playing the role of a Double Agent from the beginning of the game, Al-Cid who is plotting against his own family plotting against Arcadia while being in fact manipulated by Vayne's Unnatural cunning and finally Larsa who by the end of the game has outsmarted everyone and everyTHING. Made by the creators of Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story: no kidding.
Vagrant Story, for that matter. The game starts out with three different factions (very roughly: the Church, the Government, and the Müllenkamp Sect), in addition to Duke Bardorba's personal interest in the main plot. All of them are manipulating both Ashley Riot and some aspect of the Forces Of Evil. At least half the characters end up going rogue, one character (Rosencrantz) is already a professional traitor, another is murdered by Ashley and ends up possessing his own dead body by pure chance, and a third one (Guildenstern) appears to be working for the Church and against the Sect, but is really after the godlike powers that Sydney's skin can give him. Things get more complicated still when the entire city turns out to be a Grimoire, and possibly conscious on some level, and an entire plotline about four Fiends from ancient times is added only by mention in their respective bestiary entries.
Yakuza 2 goes outright nuts about this at the end, with just about everyone manipulating each other. Ironicly the Smug Snake Orcus On His Throne mastermind who had happily sat out the whole game runs in, declares himself the winner and gets taken out in under a minute by a Spanner In The Works who Lampshades his role by mentioning that he really hates whimpy masterminds who think they control everything. The winner on the other hand turns out to be a totally unexpected My Death Is Just The Beginning that made everything the villains tried to do pointless from the start.
Soul Nomad And The World Eaters... Oh boy... The main character and Gig are saving the world due to manipulations by Virtous, who is really setting them up to cross over into Drazil and destroy it, having previously manipulated Layna into going ahead to act as your support once you get there. While at the same time you are being manipulated by Raksha who is really Levin and is at the same time setting up Thuris and Virtious in order to kill them and become a god. This, of course, opposes Dio's manipulation of Raksha (who, in return, is manipulating him) to set up the zombified Median to destroy Drazil and reclaim his former glory... Oh yes, and Drazil was the one who manipulated Median into destroying Vigilance in the first place and then manipulated Gig into destroying most of Haephnes. And that's about, oh, half of it.
The situation that the Jedi Exile wakes up to at beginning of Knights Of The Old Republic II: The Sith Lords is the direct result of the collision of two or three Xanatos Gambits and a number of other people's plans and agendas. The Exile spends most of the rest of the game sorting some of these out.
The plot of Super Robot Wars Z essentially comes down to this, as Gilbert Durandal, Lord Djibril, Paptimus Scirocco, The Frost Brothers, Gym Ghingham, Dewey Novak, Alex Rosewater, The Gaizok, Zeo Gattler, The Vegans, The Elda, The Zeravire, The Shadow Angels, The Chirams, The Hundred Demon Clan, The Chimera Corps and The Black Charisma are all engaged in a massive contest of who is Eviler Than Thou for control of the world and the dimensional power. The heroes of ZEUTH of course play the Spanner In The Works who wrecks all their plans by blowing them all to kingdom come.
The Touhou manga Silent Sinner in Blue is basically this. Unfortunately, crippled by bad writings. Let's see...
- Someone is manipulating the unrest in the Moon.
- Yukari Yakumo plan to use Remillia Scarlet as decoy while she's infiltrating the moon from somewhere else for, probably, revenge. The plan backfired spectacularly.
- Remillia Scarlet plan to conquer the Moon, team-up with Reimu and Marisa. She doesn't realize that everyone are using her.
- Eirin Yagokoro know that she must intervene again with the politics of the Moon lest it will threaten her who is in hiding. Thus she motivate her former-disciples, the Watatsuki sisters, to foil both Yukari's and Remillia's plan. Also a good chance to clear her name.
- Patchouli Knowledge get a sense of what Eirin is planning, and is waiting for the right time to make a move for her ally Remillia.
- And finally, Yuyuko Saigyouji is the only one with clarity to see this vexing web of conspiracy, and is feigning innocence.
  - And that's just from the manga, as there's also the parallel novel, Cage in Lunatic Runagate.
- It is parodied in this installment of fancomic Scarlet Weather Archive in Japanese Red, which spoofs the above by having all the major players claim to be manipulating each other and everyone else (including the Watatsuki sisters, who had no actual contact with anyone else until recently in the canonical story), and Reimu upends all their plans by noticing Reisen II. In the end, though, it's revealed by Yuyuko that they were all just making it up as they went along.
- In the end, Yukari comes up on top, after being captured by the Watatsuki sisters, by sending Yuyuko to the moon, where she successfully steals a valuable treasure: 1000-year-old sake. The SDM crew, Reimu, and Marisa then have [[ a pool party in the Scarlet Devil Mansion's library (this is in the middle of winter)]].
The Starcraft addon Brood War had at least Kerrigan, Mengsk, Fenix, Zeratul, Duran, Daggoth and the UED all play various Xanatos Gambits against each other. The only ones who seems to be not playing Xanatos Gambit are Stukov and Raszhagal, and Stukov subsequently gets killed as a result of Duran's first Xanatos Gambit against him, while Raszhagal turns out to have been a victim of Kerrigan's manipulation and later mind-control from the very beginning.
Tales Of Symphonia. At the start of the game, we have the Church of Martel and the Desians in opposition. Then we learn that some of the Desians we faced were actually Renegades, who are in direct opposition to the Desians. The Renegades are led by Yuan. Then a mysterious assassin shows up, who turns out to have been sent to Sylvarant from Tethe'alla to stop the Regeneration, because when one world is regenerated, the other world suffers. Before we find that out, but after the first time we meet the assassin, we end up in Palmacosta, where the Governor-General is making a deal with the Desians, not realizing that he's actually just the pawn of the monster pretending to be his daughter. Then Kratos betrays you, because he's really been working for the Desians—maybe. Wait, the Church of Martel and the Desians were actually working together? Then everyone ends up in Tethe'alla, where three new party members join up in a short amount of time. Two of them have their own agendas and the third one is a Tykebomb. Also, the Pope is scheming to usurp the throne of Meltokio. Later, the party joins up with the Renegades, and, oddly enough Kratos again, because apparently he's really against the Desians. Then the Big Bad shows up in disguise and ends up helping you. He's been running this whole thing in an attempt to revive his dead older sister. Then Kratos turns out to be the main character's real father, which means he's back on your side—or not. Kuchinawa, one of the ninja of Mizuho, then joins up with the Pope. Then Zelos either betrays you or pretends to betray you and then betrays your enemies instead. If he did betray you, Kratos will join you again, but you'll have to fight him one more time before he'll join you for good. Before that, however, the Big Bad's plan is put into play, and the older sister returns from the dead—except she's got her own ideas, of course. Then the whole ruse from earlier is revealed, leading your best friend to start making his own plans. By the end, even the hero has his own ideas, and the only character to have not been involved in a Xanatos Gambit of some sort (unless you count the numerous successive non-fatal Heroic Sacrifices to each be Xanatos Gambits) is Raine. (Yes, Colette had at least one. Throughout much of Disc 1, actually.) The second game is considerably more confusing.
Rumored to be constantly at work in the MMORPG Urban Dead; it's anyone's guess how real or imaginary said plots are.

Close Video Games

Dominic Deegan is famous for his overly-elaborate schemes, but during the Storm of Souls arc, and again during the War in Hell, he was only one chessmaster among many.
Girl Genius pulls this off quite well, especially in the tangled web that was Sturmhalten. And now Mechanicsburg appears to be headed in this direction, now that we've got Agatha's group, the Knights of Jove, the Baron's army, whoever runs Zola's operation, and Tarvek again, Gil in the castle with Zeetha, and Othar back on the scene.
- Oh Good GOD, Sturmhalten. If Agatha blows that family off the map in frustration, Given that the town is overrun by revenants due to the machinations necessary for this trope, I would be right behind her, cheering. Starting with Tarvek. Think of the possibilities... tantalizing cause of death: impalement by a Revolving Door.
Girly parodies this in The Big Mix-Up — The Shadowy Guy was manipulating the adorable men and the Cute PD, Mitchroney was also manipulating them, but in a different way, and they were both pretending to be manipulated by the other in order to manipulate the other, which had the effect of manipulating the main cast.
Schlock Mercenary's overarching plot goes here; the main players are the Gatekeepers, Xinchub, the UNS government in general, dark-matter beasties from Andromeda, and the god-like AI Petey. Most of the episodic arcs look like this too. The focus characters are just regular joes trying to do a job, so they're usually used as pawns in one plot or another.
Doctor Who fancomic The Ten Doctors is all over this trope, with seemingly every villain attempting their own grand scheme. Fortunately, there are 10 Doctors to confront them. They don't have a hope in hell.
Two Kinds has the games of gods (Ephemural's comic-starting gambit to start), Evil Towers Of Ominousness (The Templars), the backroom scheming of a paranoid military culture (The Bastians), the war plans of the two Kedrian tribes, plus whatever the motivations are of a dozen secondary characters (three-quarters of whom are looking for Trace, either to help him or kill him)
The Last Days Of FOXHOUND has a lot of these (understandable, considering its source), although given the ending most of them don't come to fruition. For extra fun, you could consider the author's plot having gotten into a pile-up with Kojima's as one of these.
Penny And Aggie takes it to ridiculous levels, considering that the goals are mostly some variant of "become party queen." The consequences of intermediate steps have become more interesting than the plans themselves.
The Gallimaufry arc in Buck Godot Zap Gun For Hire is somewhere between this and a Thirty Dark Secret Pileup. Seen in a more literal form here, and seen as a Mac Guffin Delivery Service pileup here.
Terinu runs on this, what with Terinu being pursued by the Varn Gene mage, who is allied with Princess Titalia, who is plotting the overthrow of her queen mother. The pirate Mavra Chan is also allied with the Gene Mage, but only to grab as much power as she can while she pursues Terinu herself to make him her slave/assassin. Meanwhile Admiral Blake is trying to murder Terinu to keep him out of the Gene Mage's hands while jailing his own daughter in an attempt to suppress the history of humanity's genocide of the ferin.
Last Res0rt is about to run headlong into this with most (if not all) of its players, and it's all compounded by the sheer chutzpah that the results are all being broadcast as entertainment. If only real reality shows had this sort of thought put into them.

Close Web Comics

Done to death in Duckman. In one episode, while it is revealed that Duckman and Cornfed have been the unwitting pawns of a Xanatos Gambit by an ominous secret organization, the episode ends with one secret society after another viewing the events taking place in the previous organization's Evil Lair and declaring gleefully that "everything went just as planned". Cue evil laughter.
- Ending, ultimately, with Mom, Dad, Sis, and Bro watching the events on TV.
Fairly Odd Parents, "Remy Rides Again".
The second-season of WITCH ends with everybody trying to put the screws on everybody else. Nerissa is trying to get the Heart of Earth by killing Lillian's cat familiar Napoleon at the same time that the girls have let Phobos out of prison to take her two hearts. Phobos decides to screw the girls over by using the power of Nerissa's hearts once he takes them, but the girls planned for this by convincing Raythor to do a Heel Face Turn. Raythor tricks Phobos into invading Kandrakar, which would cause him to relinquish control of the hearts he took, but just before Phobos crosses the plane into Kandrakar, Cedric eats him and gains his powers AND Nerissa's. Also, Raphael Sylla and the government, who watched the final battle, planned to discover the girls' secret identities by registering Sylla as a teacher at the girls' school, but we probably won't get to see that.
- Note that, while most of this Xanatos Gambits weren't there in the original comic, the started Sylla-Gambit was eventually pulled of in it and even worked - until the oracle pulls a literal Deus Ex Machina (it's even Lampshaded) and hits the reset button.
The major plot developments of season 4 and the entirety of season 5 of the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles gets into this territory, involving three distinct active factions (government agent Bishop, demi-god quartet the Ninja Tribunal, and the quintet of schemers collectively known as the Shredder’s heralds), and three passive factions (the turtles, the Foot, and a quartet of kidnapped martial artists). It all ends up being a Xanatos Roulette involving most of the events of the series up until then.
X-Men:Evolution’s season two finale, “Day of Reckoning”, has one of these involving three different factions: Magneto and his acolytes; Mystique; and Bolivar Trask, with the X-Men and Brotherhood being stringed across for good measure.

Close Western Animation

World War One. The entire conflict is essentially the result of a Thirty Xanatos Pileup, with some of the plans having been in motion for several centuries beforehand.
Otto von Bismarck arguably was the biggest manipulator of the bunch in Europe. Though he wasn't around for the pileup that was World War I, he was very accurate as to its root cause. In December 1897 he stated:
"One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans."
- This Troper sees Bismarck as the Hari Seldon to Adolf Hitler's Mule. (Bismarck just forgot to leave a ~~Deus Ex Machina~~ Second Foundation lying around.)
- Or not; Hitler was bound to happen after WWI (Foch said "This is not a peace. It is an armistice for 20 years." and was only off by one). Bismarck is really to blame for not planning ahead. His gambits were too complicated for anybody but himself to understand, let alone keep up.
  - Bismarck himself wasn't nearly as much to blame as Kaiser Wilhelm II, the one who derailed all of Bismarck's plans simply by being a complete moron and giving Austria-Hungary a blank check. Wilhelm took the carefully crafted schemes Bismarck set up to keep Russia friendly, France isolated, and Austria-Hungary defensive and threw all those out the window because they were too complicated for him. If anyone was Bismarck's Mule it was Wilhelm.
World War Two was also largely a result of such Gambits. Most prominent were the English one by Chamberlain (who wanted to use Hitler against USSR) and Hitler's, but Finland, USSR, Poland, and even Hungary (and Italy, and Spain) had their own plans. Needless to say all this pileup crashed down... with very bad results.
Real Life in general is probably this.

Close Real Life

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