Troperville
Help us survive. All donations are anonymous on the wiki and unacknowledged, as we don't wish to create a hierarchy among Tropers.
Editing
Tools
|
"Ah, my ridiculously circuitous plan is one-quarter complete!"
-- Robot Devil, Futurama, "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings"
A type of scheme perpetrated by a particularly devious villain.
The heroes encounter an unusual event of some kind. Their curiosity piqued, the heroes investigate and discover it is somehow connected to villain's latest evil plot.
The heroes, naturally, oppose the completion of the villain's latest evil plot and prevent it from succeeding. The heroes can savor a moment of triumph over their dastardly foe.
In The Tag, the villain then explains to a henchman that either the heroes have handed him what he really wanted all along, due to their meddling, or that the very process of the plan has given him enough to come out well ahead of where he was when he started. As easy as spending money to make money.
Occasionally, a particularly intelligent hero can pull this off, sometimes manipulating the villains, sometimes his fellow heroes, and sometimes both. However, the follow-up Not So Different speech may lead to doubts that it was all worth it.
This is a convenient device on weekly series to let the villain win every now and then (preventing Villain Decay) while still giving the heroes a climactic pseudo-victory.
If it gets too convoluted, it becomes a Xanatos Roulette. If the villain's death is factored into the scheme, it is My Death Is Just The Beginning. And every once in a while, several characters will try to run Xanatos Gambits against each other all at once, leading to a Thirty Xanatos Pileup.
Named after David Xanatos, a villain on the series Gargoyles who was a master of the technique.
Contrast with the Mac Guffin Delivery Service, and the failed attempt, Springtime For Hitler.
Examples:
Live Action TV
- Every other plan by Lionel Luthor.
- Tony from Skins is fond of these. Not surprising, since he is the show's Magnificent Bastard. In one episode, he is brought to his knees by Josh, who uses a much more complicated and darker version of the Gambit himself.
- Inversion: In the Firefly episode Trash, the crew of Serenity pull off a Xanatos Gambit hinging on Saffron's sudden but inevitable betrayal (a phrase, of course, from an earlier episode of Firefly).
- And pretty much all of the episode "Objects in Space" is one giant Xanatos Gambit. Planned out by River, it turns out.
- Every single episode of Profit.
- An episode of Torchwood deals with a murderer who writes "TORCHWOOD" on the wall. The investigation forces Gwen to use the Risen Mitten on Suzie Costello, on whom the effect persists. When the killer shuts down the base from his cell with a code phrase (Emily Dickinson's "Death"), isolating Suzie and Gwen from the rest, it becomes apparent that Suzy had brainwashed him to commit the murders if he didn't see her for three months, forcing them to use the glove on her in the investigation, knowing her experience with the glove would let her make the effect permanent at the expense of the user's life.
- Giles pulls one off in the season 6 finale of Buffy The Vampire Slayer tricking Dark Willow into absorbing his more friendly type of magical energy. Of course part of his Gambit involved her trying to destroy the world.
- Sylvester McCoy's Chessmaster of a Seventh Doctor was fond of these and not above putting Ace in harm's way. He remains ultimately heroic, though.
- Multiple times the Assistant D As in Law And Order will pull some bluff outta nowhere which gets them a plea agreement. Jack McCoy is a master at this, however the show thankfully doesn't cross over into Roulettes. This is an example of the good guys pulling this off.
- Another great user of this is Randolph J. Dworkin, Esq. A lawyer who builds his defense in such a manner that it only visible as to what he's doing after he's already done it. Like making the primary point of his client's defense the terrorism in Israel after stacking the jury with Jews and making himself look like an incompetent clown.
- In an episode of Law And Order Special Victims Unit, a psychiatrist goes to the police that she suspects a postpartum patient, Janice, of abusing her child. When they get to Janice's apartment, neither she nor her child are there, but photos show she is the psychiatrist, and the office's address was her real psychiatrist, treating her for eleven months for multiple personalities brought on by parental abuse. They start a manhunt for the child, who turns out to be safe and sound with Janice's sister, whose daughter Janice had been caring for during her prison term. All of that was a sham to give credibility to Janice's insanity plea when one of her "personalities" confesses to having killed her parents. Unfortunately, by the time the detectives realize this, she's already been acquitted, and they can only get her sister for conspiracy.
- The escape plans (well, almost every plan) formulated by Michael Scofield from Prison Break exemplify this trope.
- In House, the Manipulative Bastard Anti Hero protagonist Dr. Greg House and his boss, Dean of Medicine and hospital administrator Dr. Lisa Cuddy often play the Xanatos Gambit on each other to get what they want. Notably double subverted in Season 4, in an episode where House had to pick his candidates for the fellowship positions in his team. Dr. Cuddy told House she wanted to hire the men, Taub and Kutner. And he did, firing off the women. It turns out Cuddy wanted to hire the women, and thought he'd do exactly the opposite of what she said. She then allowed House to hire another doctor, and suggests getting Dr. "Thirteen". Cuddy then realizes that's exactly what he wanted to do all along.
- Benjamin Linus on Lost has been established as a Chessmaster. He has managed, over the course of the show, to manipulate what appears to be almost the entire cast into doing pretty much everything he wants. It's gotten ridiculous at some points, but it still seems believable, as Ben has been shown to be quick on his feet when his plans don't go quite right. It's actually at the point where everything he says, absolutely everything, is picked apart by fans and other characters. As Sawyer said in a recent episode, "I think he's gonna get us, Johnny, and I bet he's already figured out how he's gonna do it."
- fading memories -- unlikely to be 100% accurate: In one episode of Automan, one plot is foiled, and a huge lump of evidence from that is stored in the police headquarters. Later, it is revealed that the bad guy's main goal is to blow up police headquarters, and inside that lump of explosive evidence is hidden a tiny bomb detonator.
Anime
- Light uses this technique in Death Note by having Misa and himself give up control of the Death Note to another individual to throw L off his track and clear his and Misa's names. The plan is uncannily successful, and ultimately L is killed as a result. In fact, Death Note has a lot of these, and some lapse into Roulettes.
- The heroes pull this off when Captain Misamaru of Martian Successor Nadesico successfully predicts the actions of the Jovians and herds their superweapon into a trap, by continually convincing them the trap is elsewhere.
- Both exemplified and subverted in Slayers NEXT. Most of the first half of the story is the heroes on the run from Gaav, a powerful demon lord. However, we find out later that the only reason he's after them is because Hellmaster Phibrizo, the true Big Bad of the series, leaked the fact that he wanted Lina Inverse for something to Gaav. Gaav plans to kill her in order to frustrate the Hellmaster, but it turns out that the Hellmaster knew he'd do that and the resulting confrontation would most likely force Lina to cast the powerful Giga Slave spell, progressing the Hellmaster's plans for annihilating the world. However, when the confrontation between Gaav and Lina comes, she's learned a part of this already and thus refuses to use the spell even when she's clearly in danger of dying, because it's so dangerous. The Hellmaster, frustrated, kills off his pawn and kidnaps Gourry, deciding straight blackmail is easier than a Xanatos Gambit.
- Another heroic example: Yugi in Yu-Gi-Oh will often use the special abilities of his opponent's monsters against them, giving them what seems like an advantage but actually isn't. Examples include his defeat of Mako Tsunami by creating a high tide, then luring all his monsters into being beached when the tide went out, and his defeat of Strings by causing him to continually draw cards, which would power up Slifer the Sky Dragon... except that it happens in a loop that results in a win by deck-out.
- This would be a Xanatos Roulette, however: Pegasus J. Crawford lost, made stuff up on the spot, and could read minds. Reading minds generally takes all the 'random chance' out of the roulette aspect of the plan. But one of his better gambits was during the flashback with Bandit Keith, where Pegasus walks over to the audience, picks a random kid, gives them his deck and a piece of paper. The Paper lists move for move what the kid needs to do to defeat Keith (this is the pisspoor backstory for why Keith exists and has a grudge against Pegasus). In the manga Pegasus and Yugi's first duel is via video, in which the video is laced with single frame images of cards making subliminal suggestions to Yugi as to how to make his deck and what cards to play, making it seem like Pegasus recording could duel... also the tape was magic.
- At the beginning of the fifth season/series of Sailor Moon (Sailor Stars), the Sailor Senshi once again have to defeat the evil queen Neherenia, the Big Bad of the previous season. However it is later revealed that her revival and attack on the world was part of a successful gambit by Big Bad Galaxia that would force Sailor Saturn to awaken as a Senshi (causing rapid aging). This would subsequently allow Galaxia to harvest Saturn's matured Star Seed and complete her plan for galactic domination.
- Played with in an episode of Samurai Pizza Cats. At the end the bad guys steal Guru Lou's inventions, and after a brief moment of panic, Speedy realises that it's a great thing because the inventions are all useless and prone to backfiring. Guru Lou claims that having the bad guys steal them was his plan all along, but the Pizza Cats dismiss the claim as "a lot of baloney". The narrator comments that "With Guru Lou, you never know what's baloney and what's filet mignon."
- Treize Khushrenada from Gundam Wing uses this technique as part of his Operation Daybreak, manipulating the Gundam pilots into killing the pacifists of the Alliance.
- Shikamaru from Naruto often incorporates Xanatos Gambit in his battles, and sometimes fake Xanatos Gambit to lure the enemy into a real one.
- Orochimaru's ultimate goal with Sasuke was to put pressure on his inferiority complex coupled with his need to avange his clan, to the end of Sasuke going to Orochimaru to gain power at the eventual cost of his body. Unfortunately for Orochimaru, Sasuke did not approve of the last part and psychichally ate him alive. Orochimaru, however, still exists in the form of a chakra transplant in his subordinate Kabuto.
- Also, Itachi has recently revealed that the reason he let Sasuke live after killing the rest of the Uchiha clan was so that he could steal Sasuke's eyes after Sasuke got stronger, which would prevent Itachi from going blind from using the Mangekyo Sharingan and give him tremendous power to boot. This plan was hampered when Itachi overestimated the amout of chakra it would take to overpower his brother, as he had apparently been in a fight prior to this.
- Or was it? Tobi revealed to a kidnapped, weakened, and unexpectedly Mangekyo-equipped (it was a booby-trap by Itachi, transferred just before he died (for real)) Sasuke that Itachi's real goal had been to get Sasuke powerful enough to defeat Tobi, who is actually Mandara Uchiha, who might be true killer of the Uchiha Clan.
- In any case, the lesson should be "don't use Sasuke for spare parts."
- In Yu Yu Hakusho, the reason Sensui set it up so that the tunnel to Makai would be opened, and the events that came afterwards, is so that he could die in Makai at the hands of a powerful demon, since it would be nobler than to die of the terminal illness he had. Said strong demon happened to be Yusuke, possessed by the spirit of his ancestor, Raizen.
- Later in the manga-only final arc, it was revealed that everything the heroes faced was an elaborate setup by King Enma, who purposely pardoned dangerous criminals with the specific hope that his detectives would capture them and thus make himself look better.
- Made use of by Bleach's Aizen, whose most recent Gambit involved supposedly kidnapping Orihime to fully awaken the MacGuffin, which lured the protagonists to try to rescue her and then get saved by some Big Damn Heroes backup... the end result being that Aizen was able to hold them captive in his realm while going to attack the now-wide-open human realm. He also uses the Xanatos Roulette quite well. There are also Gambits used by the other brains of the series: Urahara, Ishida, Captain Kurotsuchi, Szayel Aporro...
- Frequently used by Kiyomaro Takamine as part of his battle plans in ZatchBell; these have, on more than one occasion, involved disguising shapeshifter Kanchome as Zatch or one of his spells in an effort to distract their opponent while the real Zatch gets in a better position.
- Lots of these in Gundam 00:
- Aeolia Schenberg's master plan is arguably the prime example. It is doubly subverted by Alejandro Corner and then Lievonze Almack, who hijack the plan for their own respective agendas.
- The world's superpowers stage a joint military exercise on a location that is a target for an imminent terrorist attack in order to bait the rogue organization Celestial Being into intervening, then capture their Gundams after beating them down in a brutal war of attrition with their vastly-superior numbers. However, the Meisters are bailed out of their predicament by the mysterious Trinity trio.
- The HRL uses one to nearly capture Kyrios and Virtue, but fail due to unexpected emergence of the former unit's pilot's sociopathic split personality, as well as the premature revelation of a key aspect of the latter unit.
- The countries of Talibia and the United States manipulate Celestial Being's unilateral police action to advance their own respective political agendas.
one else.
- An interesting, more short-term example of this would be the fighting tactic of Caerula Sanguis from Battle Angel Alita: Last Order. Her signature technique, the Eight-Block Death Gate Array, is actually not so much a technique as it is a tactic, using a combination of reading an opponent's movements and personality, measuring the terrain, and even ferreting out various random factors to lure enemies into a situation or location where they would be completely helpless against her full attack. Apparently, the only way to survive the Array is to think of and be absolutely sure you're doing one thing while actually doing something completely different. Considering the strength instinct and habit have over most people, this tactic renders her virtually impossible to defeat one-on-one.
- In Prince Of Tennis, Badass Bookworm Sadaharu Inui is having his ass kicked in the courts by another Badass Bookworm, his former partner Renji Yanagi, who is as good as using info as Inui himself is. Then, Inui claims he won't use his data anymore... and it turns out this was fake, since he lulled Renji into a false sense of security and shaped their game into a copy of their last unfinished match. With this in mind , Inui ultimately wins
- Nakago, the master manipulator of Fushigi Yuugi executes several of these during the TV series, most notably during the retrieval of the Genbu Shinzaho.
- Lelouch, the protagonist of Code Geass is an absolute master at this. Most notable in this troper's mind was when, to defeat a nemesis who could read minds, he used his own power of absolute command to given himself orders to tell Suzaku to charge in guns blazing when he heard Lelouch scream, then wiped his own memory of this. Lelouch then plays right into Mao's hands, seemingly completely defeated. When he screams, Suzaku comes in and the gambit is revealed. It's hopelessly convoluted and yet masterful. Along with Lelouch, Cornelia and Schneizer also have been known to pull less convoluted Xanatos Gambits of their own. It must run in the family.
- An example where it isn't set up by a villain: everything in Card Captor Sakura (except for the Yaoi Guys) is an elaborate plan by Clow Reed to ensure that his magical creations would have the best master (Sakura) after his death. The reason Sakura captures the cards and then masters them is because if she didn't, they'll cause a lot of trouble in her town. However, Eriol (Clow's reincarnation, who kept all of his previous life's memories) made sure she wasn't in any real danger (or anyone else in town, for that matter). This is possible because Clow was prophetic to the point of omniscience, able to see the future so perfectly that he WAS able to see every consequence of his actions and what to cause to happen. Except for the Yaoi Guys, Eriol admits that one surprised him. As an interesting side point, the whole point of this in the manga was to rid himself of that power, which would require Sakura to be a stronger mage than him.
- No one's mentioned Hellsing yet? After Alucard's Level Zero restriction is unlocked, the souls he's devoured are released as a massive army, and while this is supposedly his most devastating ability, he's much more vulnerable because said souls are what preserves his immortality. After several battles he gathers them up again, as well as the blood spilled all over London. Apparently the Big Bad Major Montana Max was planning that this would happen all along and sends his flunky catboy Schrodinger out with the orders to "poison" Alucard. Schrodinger simply kills himself (via decapitation) and allows his body to be absorbed by Alucard and because of Schrodinger's "recognition" ability, he ceases to exist, erasing Alucard in the process. Which of course, pisses Integra off to no end.
- In Tsukihime, it is revealed in the later routes that almost any part of the game related to the Tohno family (any/all given routes) was all an enormous Xanatos Gambit of epic proportions, schemed by Kohaku as an attempt to get her revenge on the Tohno Family; it fully succeeds in 2 of the endings). Don't even get fans started on this topic, as they are highly divided on to what extent things were orchestrated.
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 Marvel's The Infinity Gauntlet crossover, the coldly calculating Adam Warlock sets into motion several futile engagements against the omnipotent Thanos and his upstart successor Nebula, designed to exploit the villains' Achilles Heel and ineptitude (respectively), and ultimately transition the Infinity Gauntlet to Warlock himself.
- It's part of the same gambit, but it's worth pointing out that a substantial part of Warlock's gambit was to script an entire battle involving more than a dozen of the galaxy's strongest warriors sacrificing their lives, to get Thanos to raise his hand at the right moment.
- Warlock's evil half the Magus is not to be outdone in the sequel crossover The Infinity War, implementing an elaborate scheme geared towards the acquisition of the Infinity Gauntlet. Unfortunately, two Chessmasters (three, if you count Thanos' duplicitous doppelganger) are better than one, and after Warlock and Thanos discern the Magus' end game, they execute a counter-scheme that sabotages the villain's newfound godhood, and ultimately leads to his defeat.
- A retcon of Thanos' earlier losses to Kazar and Thor established the two incidents as information-gathering exercises for crucial parts of the character's scheme, to be used in a future battle with the death god Walker.
- According to some newer works by Chris Claremont, everything Mystique did before the death of her clairvoyant lover Irene was a heroic Xanatos Gambit based on something she foresaw.
- In The Ultimates, Hank Pym's Ultron robots are critical to maintaining order in the conquered United States, and he claims, when the tide turns after the escape of the Ultimates and intervention of the European heroes and Thor, that his actual plan was to infiltrate the conspiracy so that his robots could turn on the invaders when they didn't expect it. Not even the robots believe it for an instant.
- Cosmic Boy of DC's Legion of Super Heroes has been known to emply the heroic version, particularly in the post-Zero Hour v4 reboot continuity. In one instance he spent an entire Story Arc acting like an enormous jerk in order to set up a Villain With Good Publicity for a fall; in another instance he got himself arrested by a former teammate in order to fake his own death and steal a faster-than-light ship for the Legion's covert use.
- The Batman has a reputation for the Xanatos Gambit, but since the mid-1990s, his Gambits consistently get hijacked by other people -- with disastrous consequences:
- In the 1997-1998 JLA story arc, "Tower of Babel", Ra's Al Ghul steals Batman's "contingency files" for taking down his fellow League members "in case they go rogue" - and uses them to cripple the League, often in horribly agonizing ways.
- In 2004's "War Games", Stephanie "Spoiler" Brown, seeking to prove that she was, indeed, worthy of the mantle of Robin, steals his plans to unite Gotham's criminal element under a puppet leader working for the Bat himself. As a result, a massive, uncontrolled gang war erupts, Gotham is under siege for weeks, the Batman alienates the police, the populace, and his own costumed cadre, the gangs wind up united under a brutal, sadistic psychopath, and Stephanie herself dies senselessly and winds up a cause celebre amongst the fandom.
- In 2005's OMAC Project, The Batman creates the Brother Eye satellite as a contingency plan to deal with rogue super-heroes. Villains secretly usurp his control of it, sending armies of glowing blue OMAC cyborgs rampaging across The DCU in a Red Skies Crossover bonanza. Seriously, Bruce, don't you ever learn?
- In Earth X, Captain America uses Alicia Master's Marvels (animated clay fashioned in the guise of Earth's heroes) to have an army immune to the Skull's mind-control, and to preoccupy the supervillain's superhuman slave army. Cap then disguises himself as a Marvel made in his image to fool the Skull into believing he's also immune to the boy's powers, allowing Cap to get in close and snap the Skull's neck.
- The 1990s comic book series Sleepwalker, where the titular alien hero became trapped in the mind of a human and could manifest on Earth to fight crime when his human host slept, had an overarching Xanatos Gambit hatched by the BigBad to invade Earth that involved using the human's mind as a gateway for his minions, all while convincing everyone on Earth that the Sleepwalker was in fact the leader of the invasion as a way to hinder the Sleepwalker's attempts to stop him.
- Nick Fury in the Ultimate Marvel universe performs one of these. In order to eliminate a dangerous assassin and recover the high tech rifle he possesses, Fury anonymously contacts the assassin and orders a hit on himself. He manages to successfully lure the assassin into the open and kill him.
- Done at least twice in Sin City:
- In "A Dame to Kill For," Ava leaves Dwight McCarthy for millionaire Damien Lord; then, four years later, comes to Dwight pretending to be afraid of Damien and his servant Manute, playing on Dwight's Lancelot complex to get Dwight to investigate and ultimately kill Damien, leaving her Damien's money.
- In "That Yellow Bastard," Senator Roark keeps Detective Hartigan from receiving a few letters from the only friend he has left, "Cordelia" (Nancy Callahan, though Roark doesn't know it), then sends Hartigan a severed finger. Predictably, Hartigan, thinking Nancy's in danger, does what he has to in order to make parole so he can rescue Nancy, then goes looking for her, only to find she was safe and unharmed until that moment, when he accidentally revealed to Roark's son, who had been following him since he left prison, that "Cordelia" was Nancy.
- John Constantine of Hellblazer often uses Xanatos Gambits to defeat his enemies, save people, or most commonly, save his own butt. Among his feats are mortally insulting one Lord of Hell and selling his soul to the other two, then cutting his wrists, and since each one of them are contractually forced to claim his soul, his death would cause a civil war in hell. To avoid this, they are forced to heal his lung cancer, which was his intention all along; and using a spell to split himself into two, a good part and a bad part, then binding the bad part with Aliester Crowley's soul, and sending it to hell, all to force a demon to release the souls of children trapped therein, including that of a girl he himself had doomed years ago.
Film
- Almost all of the major plot events in the Star Wars prequel trilogy are orchestrated by Darth Sidious (aka: Supremious Magnificentus Bastardous) in order to, in succession, become Chancellor of the Republic, be granted dictatorial authority, turn Anakin Skywalker to the Dark Side as his apprentice, exterminate the Jedi order, and declare himself Emperor. This gets so convoluted at times that it might be considered a Xanatos Roulette if he weren't borderline omniscient already. The Clone War itself was a double Xanatos Gambit, because he was the leader of both sides--no matter who won, he could assume control afterwards.
- To be fair, he didn't foresee many of the events, such as the Jedi finding Anakin on Tatooine or Amidala deciding to retake Naboo from the Trade Federation. As noted on The Force.Net forums, he is more of "the master of plan B", using even disruptions of his original plans to his advantage. Parodied by this flash animation
- Unless he did foresee those, too--later evidence suggests that he created Anakin using the techniques taught to him by his mentor, Darth Plagueis.
- He does this in the original trilogy as well: the Rebels obtain plans to the second Death Star and find out that the Emperor, his right-hand man, and most of his ruling council will be there. Naturally, they gather their entire fleet for an attack (and for some reason, bring all of their leaders along). However, It's A Trap! and now the entire rebellion is screwed. Or they would've been, if the Emperor hadn't overlooked some teddy bears. He may have been manipulating things for the rest of the trilogy, too - exactly how far his plans reach depends on how you interpret his claim that "Everything that has transpired until now has done so according to my design!"
- Works for the good guys, too, though Obi Wan is polite enough to warn Vader beforehand, "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could ever imagine."
- Hans Gruber's planned theft in Die Hard is completely dependent on the FBI cutting electrical power (per standard procedure) which disables the final, magnetic lock on the Nakatomi Plaza vault. It's quite possible that he intended to put this Gambit into action regardless of whether Mr. Takagi gave up the password - after all, all the passwords in the world wouldn't have disabled the magnetic lock.
- Hans's brother, Simon, uses this in Die Hard With A Vengeance, thus proving the Xanatos Gambit is hereditary. He leads the police on a wild goose chase, making them think he's setting off bombs to get revenge on John McClane for killing his brother, when the bombs are a mere distraction to keep the NYPD away from him while he puts his real plan into motion.
- Part A of Syndrome's scheme in The Incredibles. Whether a super succeeds or fails against the OmniDroid, Syndrome still gets to collect the data from the battle, and due to the scenario presented, no one thinks there's a need to track down the droid's source.
- The titular "hero" of The Illusionist creates such a scenario in the latter half of the movie.
- A small-scale Xanatos Gambit appears at the beginning of Life: Ray gives Claude a hug, pretending to be a high school friend of his, but Claude quickly exposes the con. When Claude has left, it becomes clear that Ray has taken his wallet (and would have been caught if the con had continued).
- A convoluted example is the movie Wild Things, where a scheming guidance counselor uses a faked rape to get money from the "rapee"'s mother. Of course, that's only step one...
- The film Where Eagles Dare had the British pulling off a Xanatos Gambit on the Nazis thanks to the Nazis thinking they were pulling one off on the British. And then the top German agent trying to pull another one over on the heroes, only to discover the British had anticipated that. It's no wonder Clint Eastwood didn't want to participate in any more British operations.
- This is used to humourous effect in Princess Bride, where Wesley and Vizzini play a game of wits: Vizzini has to guess which goblet Wesley has poisoned and select one to drink, Wesley being forced to drink from the other one. After Vizzini has (with much complicated exposition) made his choice and drunk, Wesley reveals that both the goblets are poisoned and that he has a resistance to that particular poison.
- Subverted twice in the film Equilibrium. The leaders of the Resistance turn themselves in to the reformed Preston so that the latter would be granted an audience with the mysterious Father, enabling an assassination that would spark a general insurrection throughout Libria. Father (later revealed to be Dupont) and the Tetragrammaton had anticipated this gambit and played along to lure the conspirators into their clutches, even faking the upstart Brandt's arrest to further Preton's false sense of security. However, they overestimated their ability to take down Preston, who ends up killing them all and allows the insurrection to occur.
- In Oldboy, the reason that Oh Dae-su was imprisoned is revealed to be that he used to go to the same high school as the antagonist, and saw him getting intimate with a girl named Soo-Ah. He spread a rumor about this, not knowing that Soo-Ah was actually the antagonist's sister, and the rumor eventually caused Soo-Ah to commit suicide. The antagonist gets back at Oh Dae-su by revealing that the whole point of locking him up for 15 years, killing his wife, and placing his daughter with foster parents was so that he'd start a sexual relationship with a girl named Mi-Do. Mi-Do, as it turns out, is Oh Dae-Su's daughter.
- Khan pulled this in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan when he had a brainwashed Chekov inform space station Regula 1 that Kirk had ordered Project Genesis handed over to Starfleet. Khan planned that this would allow him to (a) get the Genesis torpedo and (b) lure Kirk into a trap:
Chekov: Please prepare to deliver Genesis to us upon our arrival. Reliant out.
Khan: Well done, Commander.
Chekov: You realize, sir, that they will attempt to contact Admiral Kirk and confirm the order.
[Khan smiles knowingly]
- A particularly less well-executed Xanatos Gambit appeared in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. The problem with this one was that it was only successful due to a full-blown Idiot Plot.
- The villain in The Living Daylights has a lot on his plate: a phony KGB defection, two fake asassination attempts, a couple of kidnappings, a few real asassinations, and a weapons-for-opium smuggling operation. All of which would have left MI 6 looking like idiots, his rival in the Soviet military dead and discredited, and himself very, very rich, if it wasn't for that meddling 007...
- In The Wicker Man, the people of Summerisle create stories of a missing child to lure Sgt. Howie to the island, convince him that they're going to sacrifice the girl to appease the sun god to trick him into acting out some archetypal ritual, and then they set him on fire to appease the sun god. So he was half-right.
Literature
- In Timothy Zahn's Star Wars books, Grand Admiral Thrawn's modus operandi involved this to a certain extent; his backstory involves using this to get himself "exiled" to the galaxy's Unknown Regions, and part of his effectiveness lies in making his enemies paranoid that he might be luring them into a Xanatos Gambit, but maybe not. His war strategies also heavily relied on carefully-plotted Xanatos Gambits, and he had a habit of noticing small, insignificant details that when brought together would expose exploitable weaknesses in his foes.
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Voldemort creates a false vision to trick Harry into believing he has Sirius trapped in the Hall of Prophecy, correctly guessing Harry would go to rescue him, where he could remove The Prophecy for the Death Eaters.
- Tad Williams' trilogy Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn turns out to be a giant Xanatos Gambit: the prophetic dreams many of the protagonists have are actually sent by the villain, in order to get them to bring the three titular swords together.
- In Artemis Fowl, the title character ends his encounter with the LEPrecon with a Xanatos Gambit, using the regulations of the organization to maneuver everything into place for his escape, though he kindly leaves some of the money behind.
- The Shadow Lord's plan in series 3 of Deltora Quest.
- The terrorist plan in Frederick Forsyth's The Afghan. A seemingly straightforward attempt to use a fuel tanker is stopped - but the idea was to form a fuel-air mixture and detonate that when the ship bearing the G8 delegation passes by.
- The events of the Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant are almost entirely guided by Lord Foul the Despiser. For example, the first book involves a band of heroes fighting and defeating a mad sorceror... thus allowing Foul to acquire a powerful artifact that the sorceror had been guarding.
- The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant are littered with Xanatos gambits. The above by Lord Foul the Despiser; Thomas Covenant's plan to give Lord Foul his ring, and thus the power to destroy everything and free himself, Covenant gambling on the assumption that Foul would kill him with it first, and thus leave Covenant in a position to absorb any attack it made on the Arch of Time with his own soul; and the Creator's gamble overall, that by making use of something with free will (Covenant) to deal with Foul's machinations, he'd achieve something that would never be possible with a mere tool, without having to break the Arch of Time by reaching into The Land with his own powers.
- The absolute master in the Romance of Three Kingdoms saga is The Strategist Zhuge Liang, though he's also rivalled by fellow chessmasters Sima Yi, Zhou Yu and Pan Tong. One could argue pseudo-villain Cao "That's exactly what I was thinking!" Cao also has his moments of Xanatos inspiration.
- The entire ending scheme in the original Scarlet Pimpernel novel relies on the French buying into their own anti-Semitic tendencies. This is usually dropped from adaptations, such as the musical.
- Multiple times during The Dresden Files:
- In the third book, Grave Peril, Harry is manipulated into first making a Holy Sword touchable by the Bad Guys and consequently vulnerable to destruction, then signing his own death warrant by giving up his protection at the villain's ball through attacking the vampires and trying to prevent the destruction of the weapon. While the gambit ultimately ends ill for the the villain of the week, Harry's actions give the Red Court of vampires a justification to start their war against the White Council of Wizards, which is later strongly hinted at having been planned for a long time.
- In Summer Knight, the entire plan of the villainess Summer Lady Aurora hinges upon Harry getting far enough in his investigations to obtain a magic Mac Guffin that she then promptly steals from him.
- Arguably used by Harry himself using one antagonist against another in Blood Rites, where he devises a plan to let himself and his friend, Badass Normal policewoman Murphy, be captured by the villain only to free themselves and take him on in his own lair to save both Harry's life and that of his brother. After a long fight, the villain proves just barely more than Harry and Murphy can handle - which Harry suspected all along, and he promptly reveals that all along it was his plan to reveal the villain's vulnerability to said villain's daughter, who promptly usurps him.
- Taking into account the revelations at the beginning of Dead Beat, it is unclear whether Mavra's attacks on Harry in Blood Rites were genuinely meant to take him out and she just managed to use it against him later on, or whether the entire point of her attacks had been provoking Harry into providing her with the means to blackmail him into doing a job for her.
- Harry himself suspects at the end of White Night that most of the events of the book had been planned out by Lara of House Raith in order to make their rivals move prematurely against them and simultaneously make Harry stomp said rivals down.
- And finally, of late Harry has begun to suspect that everything that's happened to him since the first book was part of someone's plan.
- The original novel Dracula, where the Count's master plan to infiltrate England and spread his vampire curse was only foiled by the the Deus Ex Machina of asylum doctor John Seward just happening to be the former student of Professor Van Helsing, the only person who'd recognise a vampire attack and know exactly what to do. Dracula's meticulous setup and coverup of his lairs and his later manipulation of Mina as a weapon against his pursuers was only matched by Van Helsing's counter-Xanatos of hypnotising her to deduce the Count's location.
- Steven Brust's Jhereg has an unusual take on this; the villain sets up a careful scheme designed to get the protagonist to kill him, under circumstances which will start a bloody war between two noble houses he hates.
- Considering that Dragaera has an entire Great House of Xanatos Gambitters in the Yendi, this also gets used in several other books. particularly notable are Yendi itself, where the Sorceress in Green and Sethra the Younger have been screwing with the internal politics of House Dragon to make sure the latter becomes Warlord when the new Emperor/Empress takes over and Phoenix, where the Goddess Verra uses Vlad in a plot to try to calm the Teckla uprisings by starting a war with another country to get them to unite against a common enemy. The latter didn't work out very well.
- This troper is astonished that Havelock Vetinari, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork in the Discworld series, has yet to be named. This is a man who suffered censure after surrendering unconditionally to an enemy, only to be hailed as a hero after the island they were fighting over sank back into the sea, incidentally making the surrender a peace treaty, as the terms of the surrender (purely by chance, he claimed later) were to be decided on the now non-existent land-mass.
- Miles Vorkosigan. Just... Miles Vorkosigan.
- Sherlock Holmes is a rare example of a protagnoist using this trope, as he often uses small-scale Xanatos Gambits to trap criminals or get information he requires. In the course of the stories, he does everything from plant false reports in the media, to put on disguises, to fake his own death, twice, in order to solve the various cases he handles. He's even gone so far as to lie to and manipulate Watson and his clients if necessary, although usually not in a way that puts them in danger.
- There are a number of examples of Xanatos Gambits within Enders Game (and its sequels). Most of these are done by the protagonists, though one antagonist, Achilles, becomes well known for these. In the final battle of the book Ender makes use of the enemy's dual expectations, that no one would ever kill a queen and that humans are rational and will try to survive any battle, as well as the fact that the enemy is distracted trying to manage all of its ships, in order to slip some fighters in close to the planet and destroy both it and the enemy fleets in a single blow. This is a fairly convoluted set of circumstances, all of which are needed for the plan to work, and so it does come near being a Xanatos Roulette.
- In Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, Hari Seldon basically sets up centuries worth of Xanatos Gambit in advance, using statistics. Somewhat subverted when it turns out that he actually left behind a secret Second Foundation to keep history working precisely according to his plan.
- As explained on the What An Idiot page, Gandalf used one of these to distract Sauron from the true location of the One Ring, convincing him that Aragorn had the Ring and was planning to use it against him. Of course, the whole thing was a diversion to allow the hobbits to enter Mordor unnoticed.
- In Double, Double / The Case of the Seven Murders, part of the villain's plan depends on the detective identifying the pattern and convincing victim #5 he will be next, adding a number of omens to further frighten the superstitious victim, so that he would make out his will to the killer. Subverted in that the killer overdoes it, the victim changes his will again, then everything spirals out of control as another person figures things out, necessitating two more murders.
Radio
- Dr. Blackgaard of Adventures In Odyssey was able to pull these off fairly frequently. For example, on his second or third return from being Not Quite Dead, everyone is concentrating on his campaign for mayor, when his real plan involves stealing a rare mineral from the land under Whit's End that is the key ingredient in a bioterror formula. He could believably pull off convoluted secret plans because of his ability to bribe and blackmail others into doing most of his dirty work for him while he sat in his office petting his cat.
Western Animation
Video Games
- Master Li's plan to conquer the world in Jade Empire straddles the line between this and the Xanatos Roulette -- in this case, however, part of the character's persona is that he's such a master tactician that he can anticipate all the chance occurences that would potentially derail his master plan.
- Isaac pulls this on both Hector and Trevor in Castlevania: Curse of Darkness. He lures Hector (to whom he serves as a worthy opponent) along with the promise of eventually facing him in battle, and at the same time draws Trevor's attention. When he slips into the Infinite Corridor, Trevor is forced to let Hector into it... which leads to Hector accidently breaking the seal on Dracula's Castle, Isaac's goal the entire time.
- Of course, ultimately, we learn who the real wirepuller is. It's Dracula, of course; he'd be playing Xanatos Roulette if he didn't already have his hooks deep into Hector and Isaac's psyches and thus a much greater chance of success than the average Yagami. The entire game is triggered by Dracula's effort to resurrect himself, to wit - raise the castle with Isaac's yanking of Hector and Trevor, have Isaac stab that damn Belmont, then possess Hector when Hector finally gets sick of this nonsense and kills Isaac, thus sealing the curse. Alas, he wasn't counting on Julia being the only one in the game with a clue.
- Also, in Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, Mathias Cronqvist used Leon Belmont to kill Walter Bernhard to absorb his soul. At the end, Mathias is implied to be the Dracula, Lord of the Vampires.
- Being a thief-for-hire, Garrett of Thief 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 the LucasArts game Loom, the villain traps you in a cage, but doesn't take your magical staff. Big mistake, right? Not quite -- what he really needed was the "open" spell. He watches you cast it and then takes your staff.
- In the game Overlord The game turns out to be a Xanatos Gambit designed to allow the previous Overlord to easily return to his place in case he was "defeated", by taking over the body of the Wizard who helped slay him, manipulating one of the heroes who defeated him into becoming his temporary successor, and corrupting the other heroes so the new Overlord would be forced to eliminate them. It doesn't quite go as planned... but a cryptic scene in at least one of the endings implies that he may have had a back-up plan for if his first plan failed, too.
- It's probably worth observing that the player usually can't do anything about the gambit, even if they see it coming. The only option is usually inaction, from the character's perspective, which means putting the game away and never playing it again, from the player's perspective. And if you miss a deadline attached to gambit, it's usually a game over, although strictly speaking you've won.
- An exception is the more open RPG's, where although usually your only option is to abandon the quest, talking to the intended victim before completing your apparent task will occasionally allow you to thwart "Xanatos."
- Hideo Kojima is absolutely crackers about these.
- Metal Gear Solid features a hastily improvised Gambit (developed by the bad guys' resident psychic, sensibly enough) which revolves around a single-use keycard which will toggle a nuclear weapon from "active" to "inactive" or vice-versa. The bad guys seem to accept that facing off against the hero is a suicidal masquerade to set up deathbed conversions and make the plan convincing.
- The sequel goes into a full-blown Xanatos Roulette to underscore the power of the Government Conspiracy. Or sentient assemblage of constitutional amendments, or AIs, or whatever the hell they are.
- The third game's tragic denouement reveals a Gambit (authored by an earlier iteration of the aforementioned conspiracy) which went right up to the pseudovillain's own demise at the hands of the hero.
- The Interactive Fiction game Spider and Web is one of the few games that lets the player character unleash one. This is quite possibly the most satisfying moment in any computer game, ever.
- Practically every RPG where the hero learns that he's actually helping destroy the world rather than save it.
- In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, when the player draws the master sword, Ganondorf reveals that all the damage he did that the player had to undo in the first three dungeons was in fact part of a plan to manipulate the player into opening the sealed room in the temple of time and remove the master sword, unsealing the gate to the sacred realm so that he could get through.
- In the fourth case of Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney, Manfred von Karma pulls one of these off when he allows Phoenix to get a Not Guilty verdict for Edgeworth in the trial at hand--which causes Edgeworth to confess that he accidentally killed his father fifteen years ago, allowing von Karma to prosecute him for a more personal reason.]]
- It happens again in the second case of the Third game, when Godot points out that Phoenix proved that Ron DeLite was not at the scene of the theft, but instead was at the scene of a murder, so he procceds to arrest him for a major crime.
- Also, in the fourth case of the fourth game, Kristoph's plan to frame Phoenix for using fake evidence, and Phoenix's plan to get Kristoph imprisoned for his crimes which involves changing the entire legal system.
- All of the events within the Playstation 2 Shinobi turn out to be one big Xanatos Gambit orchestrated by the Final Boss Hiruko: He manipulated Hotsuma into defeating Yatsurao so that the villain could absorb the countless number of souls that was subsequently releases from the fallen giant. And he intended from the very beginning for Hotsuma to gather all of the souls of each foe he had sent to take him out, at which point he'd defeat Hotsuma and take all those souls for himself.
- In Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark, the first two parts are basically a Xanatos Gambit by Mephistopheles, one of the nine dukes of hell. Mephistopheles is trapped by an evil queen of the drow. He secretly arranges for a unique artifact to be given to the player character, and then tells the evil queen that he has foreseen that the player is a threat to her plans. She immediately sends assassins to kill the player, who fail, thus drawing the player into her current conflict. With his life guarded by the artifact, the player will be revived no matter what the queen can throw at him, and become more and more determined to bring down this powerful drow enemy who simply will not stop attacking him. So eventually the queen will be forced to use her single most powerful weapon, Mephistopheles himself, to try and kill the player... but due to the artifact, Mephistopheles cannot kill the player. Since being ordered to do something he is incapable of breaks breaks the queen's geas on Mephistopheles, he is now free. Unfortunately, one of the things Mephistopheles is now free to do is repossess his artifact and then kill you. Fortunately, the story doesn't end there...
- King Dedede in The Subspace Emissary: Somehow knowing that Tabuu can, and will take over the world successfully, Dedede takes some characters as trophys, one of which he KO'd himself, and placed badges on them, which, after Tabuu pretty much beats everyone(We'll never know how Sonic got away scot-free), the badges activate, and Ness and Luigi get restored, get Dedede back up, and then go on and restore half the fighting force.
- The Dojo revealed that Dedede actually learned of Tabuu and his Off-Waves attack in the taking of the Halberd, and made the badges in case all heroes got transformed into trophys to get some of them back to rescue them.
- Still, you get into Roulette territory when you see Kirby get restored, because he decided to eat the badge that he found earlier, allowing him to restore everyone else.
- That was apparently a convenient accident.
- The closing song at the end of Portal implies that the entire game, including the testing scenarios trying to kill you, were all a Xanatos Gambit by GLaDOS to obtain testing data on the Portal Gun under the most grueling circumstances possible.
- It could be that GLaDOS is just rationalizing things that way. She spends most of the game changing her story to make you stop trying to escape.
- Or maybe that's just what she WANTS you to think.
- In .hack//G.U. In what is possibly the longest Xanatos Gambit to ever occur in gaming, Ovan uses a Xanatos Gambit that spans three games in order to make Haseo become strong enough to destroy him.
- The game Vampire The Masquerade : Bloodlines features a truly epic one of these, made even better by the possibility that it was done for no other reason than laughs and chuckles. Playing up the possibly than a unearthed Sarcophagus with vaguely Vampiric imagery contains an ancient and all powerful Vampire, the conspirators invade the ship carrying it, kill everyone abroad and leave a trail of blood leading into the Sarcophagus itself. As expected every special interest group in the city promptly declares war on each other in order to acquire it, eventually leading to the destruction of a good couple in the process. Amazingly enough you only find this out in the endings where someone opens the thing, revealing it to be filled with explosives primed to detonate when the cover is removed. This is all pulled off by two minor characters barely removed from random NPC’s, one of whom is the nameless taxi driver!
- Actually, the taxi driver is heavy alluded to being Caine, the mythical First Vampire, based on the reaction to him if you play as a Malkavian and the file names for said cab driver's lines. Word Of God has refused to confirm whether or not this is true.
- Of course, this theory, like all theories about the plot of the game, can't be confirmed. There is definitely someone running a Xanatos Gambit involving the Sarcophagus, but neither the player character nor the player find out who. The fact that this is perfectly in spirit with the setting saves it from being a Wall Banger.
- Shuji Ikutsuki's plot in Persona 3 is a classic example: he tricks the heroes into thinking that the destruction of the twelve Greater Shadows will lead to them saving the world, when it actually results in The End Of The World As We Know It.
- In
|
