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alt title(s): Plan A Plus Plan B; All According To Plan 
"The key to strategy...is not to choose a path to victory, but to choose so that all paths lead to a victory."
"Let us assume that Batman wins. Doom's machinations are such that even if Batman manages to be triumphant, his victory will only come about in a way that somehow furthers Doom's overall villainous schemes."
A type of scheme perpetrated by a particularly devious villain.
The heroes uncover a conspiracy being organized by the villain. Jumping into action, the heroes move against his plan, fighting off mooks and The Dragon, determined to not allow the villain to fulfill his plan. Putting forth their greatest effort, they manage to win the day.
The heroes celebrate their victory and congratulate each other on a job well done, satisfied that the villain was put in their place.
In The Tag, the villain then explains privately to his defeated Dragon (possibly with a Psychotic Smirk) that the heroes only managed to avert the most obvious plan. Somehow, the villain planned for it and the heroes victory actually helped to further the villain's goals. Or maybe the outcome of the scheme was unimportant from the beginning, that the very process of the plan gave the villain an edge.
The Xanatos Gambit can be used by either Hero or Villain, but considering the very underhanded nature it is often used by a villain. At its most basic, the Xanatos Gambit is about secretly manipulating someone into trying to stop your own plans. It assumes two possible outcome by the one manipulated - success or failure, and the plan is designed in such a way that either outcome will ultimately further your goals.
A common version is where there is the obvious goal (Plan A) and the hidden goal (Plan B). By defeating (A), the heroes end up furthering (B). The success of (A) may or not be actually beneficial to the villain, but usually (B) is the preferred goal. Sometimes, though rarely, (A) was the preferred goal, but the villain is surprisingly satisfied with the consolation prize of (B).
Since the Xanatos Gambit usually involves the failure of an obvious goal, 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. The only way to escape a Xanatos Gambit once you're caught up in one is by taking a third option, somehow foiling both (A) and (B) and leaving the organizer thoroughly beaten.
There are so many related tropes we have a whole index for them.
Just think of it as a win-win situation for whoever plots it.
This trope is named after David Xanatos, one of the main antagonists in the series Gargoyles who was a master of the technique, and used it consistently to serve his own ends.
Compare Batman Gambit, where the planner chooses a likely outcome based on how certain people would act.
Expect Spoilers
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- Early in fifth season/series of Sailor Moon (Sailor Stars), the Sailor Senshi have to defeat the previous season's Big Bad again. However it is later revealed that her revival and attack on the world was part of a successful gambit by Big Bad Galaxia forcing Sailor Saturn to awaken as a Senshi (causing rapid aging), subsequently allowing Galaxia to harvest Saturn's matured Star Seed and complete her plan for galactic domination.
- Death Phantom aka Wiseman, the Big Bad of the second season constructed an elaborate plot that would allow him to destroy the universe of both the past and future which involved him playing the role of the Evil Chancellor to the Black Moon Clan, having them attack the earth of the future then in traveling back in time to attack the earth of the past, having the Sailor Senshi foil them, then have the Senshi traveled to the future so he could get his hands on the Mac Guffin Girl he needs for his plan, Chibiusa.
- 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."
- Made use of by Bleach's Aizen, whose most recent Gambit involved supposedly kidnapping Orihime to force her fully awaken his 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. (S)He also uses the Xanatos Roulette quite well. There are also Gambits used by the other brains of the series: Urahara, Ishida, Mayuri, Szayel Aporro...
- That particular gambit failed. The human realm wasn't THAT wide open: Yamamoto and the other captains already had a plan of their own to counter it, which involved guarding the four pillars that the Arrancars must use if they want to pass towards Earth. It certainly helps that two of these four Shinigami "guards" have their own reasons to join that mission as well.
- Until it didn't. As some of us expected, he could have taken control of the situation whenever he wanted, but was just saving the top troops until the good guys were good and tired.
- And then it did. The Vizard show up in a Big Damn Heroes moment, tell off both sides and start kicking ass.
- In Kure-nai, the protagonist Benika pulls off such a gambit with her "kidnapping" of little Murasaki Kuhouin. Although she assigned Shinkurou as a bodyguard to protect Murasaki from being recaptured by her own (very messed up) family, she never expected to keep her safe from them forever. Instead, her plan was to "poison the prize" by letting Murasaki experience enough of the outside world while living with Shinkurou, she would hopefully return to the Kuhouin family with the knowledge and willpower to bring down the family's traditions from the inside.
- In Gundam 00, the country of Taribia declares its withdrawal from The Union, prompting a military action from America, the community's most powerful member. Taribia intends for Celestial Being to intervene in the conflict against America (who they perceived to have a monopoly over The Union), but the organization instead moves against Taribia, who they designated as the instigators of the conflict. Taribia is forced to return to The Union for America to instruct its forces to aid Taribia in fighting off Celestial Being. However, Taribia's current government is now secured with America's support, and America coming to Taribia's aid quells the anti-American sentiment within the country.
- It is implied by Ms.Sumeragi's exposition after the mission that Taribia planned this from the beginning, the government wins support from conservatives in their country by taking a hard stance against America but doesn't actually have to suffer the consequences of leaving the Union. They get their cake and eat it because they expected Celestial Being to show up and intercede.
- Xanatos Gambits happen all the time in Death Note. Most of which are performed by Light and L.
- ... and which fail as often as not. Most of the plot can be described as one long match of Xanatos Speed Chess.
- Chapter 19
 of the manga is an excellent example.
- El Hazard The Magnificent World has one; Princess Fatora was kidnapped and then rescued just so that the heroes would use her to unseal the Forgotten Superweapon...the other Forgotten Superweapon. (The villains' backup plan was to simply use her to unseal it themselves.)
- In Eyeshield 21, Hiruma, for most of the time, always had some plans that enables him to pull a comeback move from dire straits for his team. Some of his plans often seems ridiculous or just plain batshit insane, but it works most of the time.
- The heroes of the manga Rave Master occasionally use one of these to defeat their enemies' Phlebotinum-powers. In volume 27, for instance, Action Girl Julia, badly injured, grabs an acid-powered villain and jumps out of the air ship, so that he will plummet to his death. He responds by sneering at her and transforming his body into acid. Julia then taunts him about the stupidity of turning yourself into a liquid substance while falling at terminal velocity.
- Sensui from Yu Yu Hakusho had a Xanatos Gambit within a Batman Gambit. He knows the heroes are going to come storm his base to stop him, so he sends Amanuma to face them. Amanuma is an eleven-year-old kid whose special power is to bring video games to life, and Sensui selects one that very clearly kills the antagonist if the heroes win, or the heroes if they give up. Amanuma's powers will make that ending a reality if that's how the game goes, so the heroes conclude that the intent was to stall them; they're stuck until they or Amanuma die. Kurama shoots the dog, but then Sensui reveals the other side of the plan: Koenma was really the only character who had the power to stop him all by himself, and Sensui needed to neutralize him. Since Koenma was the one who hired Sensui as Spirit Detective and sent him on the road to madness anyway, Sensui knows that Koenma feels extensively guilty about the whole affair, and, if the heroes killed Amanuma, he knew Koenma would drain his power to bring Amanuma back to life. Either way, the Makai Tunnel would open.
- In Detective Conan, Heiji purposefully gets a make-over by Mrs Kudo to look like Shinichi, then appears in public as a decoy to confuse everyone off their rocker, subsequently , and still publically, taking off his makeup to keep the fact that Shinichi is REALLY still alive from the Crooks in Black.
- Naraku pulls off several of these in Inu Yasha
- And the ending reveals that the composite demon Magatsuhi had been playing the entire cast, including Naraku, from day one. Magatsuhi's goal throughout the series was to find suitable replacements for Midoriko and himself (who turned out to be Kagome and Naraku) so that he could be free of the jewel while at the same time ensuring that the Shikon No Tama would continue to spread suffering through its very existence. Inuyasha ended up being the Spanner In The Works that derailed everything.
- Naruto of all people pulls off a Xanatos Gambit that results in God Realm Pain's death. Intentionally misses with his special Rasengans to trick Pain into dropping his guard, reveals his Shadow Clone trump card, they take the hit from Pain's signature spammy attack on purpose, setting up the real attack.
- There is also the earlier, and much greater, example from Itachi who murdered his clan, infiltrated Akatsuki and became what amounts to the personification of evil in Sasuke's mind so that when his little brother eventually came to try and kill him Itachi could die with a clean conscience and implant a one-time-only Amaterasu into Sasuke that would activate on first sight of Madara Uchiha.
- Madara Uchiha is quite good at this as well, even when his plans fail, he has a back-up plan to fall back on, and can often net a consolation prize. He loses to the 1st hokage at the valley of the end, but is able to fake his death and disappear from the public eye, rather than being a wanted S class missing nin. He fails to destroy Konoha with the 9-tailed fox, but instead succeeds in eliminating the 4th Hokage, one of the greatest ninjas who ever lived, and one of the few who was both aware of him and capable of stopping him. He has back-up plans just in case Itachi would try to silence him, and back-up plans just in case his Superpower Lottery Dragon would be defeated/heel-faced.
- And let's not forget Shikamaru, who utilises one in virtually every fight he's in, lulling his opponent into a false sense of security before revealing he's been ten steps ahead of them the whole time.
- Blue (or Green, in the English version) in Pokémon Special pulls off at least one of these per story arc, some more complicated than others. And some that are just plain Ass Pulls.
- A seemingly weak Beast Fighter sent by the Boazanians to fight Voltes V was in fact designed to unknowingly perform detailed physical scanning on the eponymous Combining Mecha during their fight. The Boazanian's then use the data gathered from the battle to develop a countermeasure for the mecha's Transformation Sequence, which they utilize during the next fight to render the Five Man Band helpless.
- Hellbat pulls one towards the end of Transformers Victory, when he suggests that Deathsaurus raise Atlantis to harvest the energy and says it's Leozack's idea. If this plan succeeds, the Decepticons benefit. If it fails, Deathsaurus kills Leozack.
- Fushigi Yuugi's Big Bad Nakago pulls one of these in the middle. After Ashitare's failure to kill Miaka, Nakago sends him after Nuriko as he is about to obtain the Shinzahou. The point was to get Ashitare killed in the attempt, something which Nuriko succeeds doing albeit at the cost of his life. However, unknown to the heroes, only Ashitare's human part died (he is a werewolf), while his wolf part is perfectly intact and was able to get the Shinzahou from them.
- Mahou Sensei Negima: This is a common interpretation of Chao Lingshen's plans; If she wins, magic is revealed to the world and a future disaster is averted. If Negi defeats her...then he's strong enough to avert the disaster himself.
- Kurt Godel is obviously pulling one of these on Negi, but his ultimate goal is unclear.
Comic Books
- A retcon of two separate plots of Thanos that were foiled by Kazar and Thor (respectively) established the two incidents as also being information-gathering exercises for crucial parts of a future plot against the death god Walker.
- Almost the entire run of Cable & Deadpool has elements of this, particularly in the first six-issue story arc, where Cable explains to the One World Church folks that he intended them to succeed in infecting the world with the Facade virus, so that he could control it and unite the governments of the world in the common cause of defeating him. He explains his various plans after-the-fact in several arcs. Deadpool often ends up being manipulated in these situations.
- The Supreme Intelligence of Marvels' Kree Empire is a master of this. His defeats frequently lead to sequels where he gloats that the defeat was only part of some bigger, more elaborate scheme.
- Lord Malvolio, the son of a Terran woman and an extraterrestrial Green Lantern Corps member, who had his father's ring, tricked Green Lantern Hal Jordan into taking his ring. After Jordan had thought that he defeated him, Malvolio simply got back up again. While Jordan may have had Malvolio's ring through Emerald Twilight, Malvolio only returned in prose.
- Virtually the entirety of Ed Brubaker's final two arcs on Daredevil turned out to be an elaborate ploy by Daredevil's ally Master Izo to put Daredevil in charge of the ninja-cult The Hand. Doing this involved, among other things, setting up another hero to be killed and resurrected in such a way that would allow him to infiltrate the Hand free of its black magic, and training the ninja villain Lady Bullseye for years while convincing her that his real plan was to make her the leader of the Hand.
- Prometheus finally got to pull a Xanatos Gambit in the recent JLA: Cry for Justice miniseries (for a character who's the Evil Counterpart of Batman, it sure took long enough) - the heroes think they've captured him and are loosening his tongue with a spot of recreational interrogation only to learn the 'Prometheus' they've captured is just a Clayface and the whole affair was orchestrated by the real deal for the purposes of data collection.
Film
- Darth Sidious/Emperor Palpatine in the original Star Wars trilogy. There are two Skywalkers, one's already his apprentice but he's more machine than man now and the other is young and idealistic and a potential threat. So he tries to tempt Luke to the Dark Side with a duel with his father. If Luke wins, he gets an upgraded apprentice, if not, he’s rid of a potential threat.
- His plans for the use of Death Stars are most definitely not Xanatos Gambits however but in fact Batman Gambits with a couple of big Kansas City Shuffles. He needs everything to go according to plan but is ruined by his underestimations of the heroes' capacities.
- 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."
- Sidious's plan in "The Phantom Menace" is a Xanatos Gambit— at the start of the film he wants the Trade Federation to hold Queen Amidala prisoner; when she escapes, he sends his apprentice, Darth Maul, to prevent her from reaching Coruscant. But Amidala does reach Coruscant, and within a couple hours she's helped Sidious become Chancellor Palpatine.
- The entire prequel trilogy of Star Wars, in fact, was one giant Xanatos Gambit by Sidious: he controlled both sides in the Clone Wars (the Republic as Chancellor Palpatine, the Separatists as Darth Sidious) so whichever side won, the Jedi would be destroyed, he would become Emperor, and he would have a powerful Sith apprentice (Count Dooku or Darth Vader: this was decided - possibly along with the outcome of the entire war - by their duel at the beginning of "Revenge of the Sith").
- This was actually planned as well with Palpatine convincing Dooku to defeat Kenobi while losing to Anakin thereby allowing the two to convert Anakin to the dark side. Dooku forgot that there could only be 2 Sith at a time.
- The Ep III novelization says that he didn't so much forget as thought they were going to revive the Sith Order and do away with the rule of two deal. He apparently did forget that Sith are lying, traitorous dicks though.
- The novelization also explicitly explains the Xanatos Gambit, although author Matthew Stover uses the term "Perfect Jedi Trap." He first cites the confrontation on Utapau as an example of the Perfect Jedi Trap: if Grievous wins, Sidious is rid of an excessively troublesome Jedi; if Obi-Wan wins, Sidious is rid of a minion who'd outlived his usefulness anyway. In either case, Anakin's conscience is away from Coruscant for Sidious' big move. Of course, the novel goes on to explain that the Clone Wars themselves were one big Perfect Jedi Trap a few chapters later.
- In fact, he would have won even if both sides blasted each other to rubble: In that case, well, someone has to rebuild the galaxy, and the Jedi would be honor-bound (Jedi-Code-bound?) to help, even knowing what he was. Which could lead to some very interesting alternate-timeline fan fiction, if you think about it.
- However, it should be noted that Palpatine did not notice Luke being amongst the strike force, nor did he seem to expect him to be. It's details like that that end up getting you thrown down a giant chasm in your throne room by your right hand man.
- 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 question the droid's source.
- 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).
- This is used to humourous effect in The Princess Bride, where Westley and Vizzini play a game of wits: Vizzini has to guess which goblet Westley has poisoned and select one to drink, Westley being forced to drink from the other one. After Vizzini has (with much complicated exposition) made his choice and drunk, Westley reveals that both the goblets are poisoned and that he has a resistance to that particular poison.
- Old Boy. Oh Dae-Su appears to get closer and closer to his target, but it turns out his every move is in fact controlled by Lee Woo-Jin, who is exacting his own revenge in the process. Arguably Xanatos Roulette, but unquestionably epic in its execution.
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the movie) consists of pretty much by-the-book Xanatos Gambit of the bunch being called together with the sole reason of acquiring their "components" for super soldiers and their employer was the Big Bad and the plan comes together the moment they save the day.
- Something similiar happened in the comic, but instead of stealing their powers, Moriarty was trying to steal the cavorite from First Men in the Moon from Dr. Fu Manchu.
- In The Dark Knight, the Joker had his where he was hoping to get captured in the process of attacking the convoy.
- The hero of The Departed has one when he tries to arrest Matt Damon alone. Because Matt Damon is the only surviving member of the Mexican Standoff, this reveals that he was The Mole, so Marky Mark kills him.
- In the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, Jack Sparrow may pull off several brilliant Xanatos Gambits, or he may just be very good at improvising. Probably both.
- Subverted in Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare: Freddy uses the last survivor of the Springwood genocide to lure his daughter to him, then uses her as a vessel to escape the town and be unknowingly taken into new killing grounds. However, he ends up getting Hoist By His Own Petard, as his daughter becomes the very instrument of his permanent death (for a while, anyway).
- Ran, a Setting Update of King Lear by Akira Kurosawa, made the entire plot an even bigger Xanatos Gambit than the original source, as orchestrated by Kaede, with the twist that they actually meant for it to end in everybody's death: the daimyo in the role of Lear killed their entire family when they were little, and having accomplished their goal they quietly accept their own death.
- These pop up in the Riddick franchise now and then.
Riddick: Don't bother. Guards ain't there. They figured out the Necros are coming from me. Plan was to clean the bank, ghost the mercs, break wide for the tunnel. And then somebody got a lucky shot off with this rocket launcher here and took out the sled. Guards took off on foot, but rigged the door so no one could follow. They'll take the one ship in the hanger, and leave everyone else here to die.
Toombs: How come you know all this shit? You weren't even here.
Riddick:: Because it was my plan.
- The Ocean's Eleven movies. Every. Single. Time.
- The villains' plan in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. First, Destro develops Nano-mite warheads for NATO, in order to secure their funding to build his criminal empire. He intends to use them in major population zones to scare the world into the arms of the "world's most powerful man". OK, that's a cute little Batman Gambit he has going. However the Nano-Mites themselves are the brainchild of The Doctor (not that one), who himself is using Destro as a Xanatos Sucker. All The Doctor wants is to invent bizzare new methods to kill and torture For Science! and needs the funding from the plan to suceed. When the heroes foil the plan and ruin his chances, he uses the chaos of the escape and Destro's sudden loss of his power base to usurp control and devote the groups actions to his scientific endevours while assuming the mantle of Commander.
- Ah, but there's more to it than that. The success or failure of the Nano-mite attack was irrelevant to the long-term plan. All that matters was that it was launched, providing an opportunity to get the President of the USA (the "world's most powerful man") into a position where he could be replaced by a doppleganger (who is probably still under the Commander's control, even if he thinks that he isn't). Now that this has been done, scaring up a terrorist threat large enough to justify seizing extraordinary powers should be child's play. Which leads on to the next stage of the plan - if Joe remain oblivious, Zartan will be in a position to cripple them, and if they find out and attempt to remove him, the attempt could easily be portrated as a military coup, which would cause their allies to turn on them. Even if Joe succeeds in exposing Zartan, they will have suffered substantial damage and will be under a lingering cloud of suspicion; the world's governments having been driven into a crippling and eminantly exploitable state of paranoia by the twin prospects of a renegade military and high officials being replaced by duplicates. Meanwhile the Commander and Destro will certainly have been freed, and the seeds of the Cobra organisation laid.
Literature
- The overarching plot of the Bible according to christian interpretation is basically a Xanatos Gambit planed by God against Satan, Satan has Christ killed, thinks he has won but Christ's death makes the way for people to be right with God.
- The above comes across in the lion the witch and the wardrobe
- The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov is built upon Gambit and counter-Gambit, to the point where listing all of them would likely double the length of this page.
- More specifically, the Second Foundation plans a giant Xanatos Gambit hundreds of years in the future, and literally has it down to a science. To quote an exposition speech from a teacher to a student about his own contribution to the gambit:
"It does not", said the Speaker. "seem to be much. It is a point in the Plan which we will not reach for a time as long as that which has already passed. It is at the period of coalescence, when the Second Empire that is to be is in the grip of rival personalities who will threaten to pull it apart if the fight is too even, or clamp it into rigidity if the fight is too uneven. Both possibilities are considered here, followed, and the method of avoiding either indicated.
"Yet it is all a matter of probabilities, and a third course can exist. It is one of comparatively low likelihood - twelve point six four percent, to be exact - but even smaller chances have already come to pass and the Plan is only forty percent complete. This third probability consists of a possible compromise between two or more of the conflicting personalities being considered. This, I showed, would first freeze the Second Empire into an unprofitable mold, and then, eventually, inflict more damage through civil wars than would have taken place had a compromise never been made in the first place. Fortunately, that could be prevented, too. And that was my contribution.
- Every one of the Deaf Man's plans in Ed McBain's 87th precinct novels is a Xanatos Gambit up until the point where authorial intervention causes them to go awry just as he's about to achieve them.
- A few in the Father Brown stories, but most memorably in "The Sins of Prince Saradine" and "The Duel of Doctor Hirsch".
- In Andre Norton's Victory on Janus, THAT WHICH ABIDES executes a Xanatos Gambit to weaken its age-old enemies, the Iftin, by deploying android duplicates of specific Iftin and human individuals in staged "attacks" outside human settlements. If a staged attack succeeds in persuading a human settlement to open its gates to let in a "human fugitive" pursued by "Iftin", the settlement can be wiped out, thus depriving the real Iftin of potential recruits and allies; if the tactic fails, the Iftin are made to look like monsters, and the humans are likely to wipe them out.
- The Unseen Evil Overlord Arawn of Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles pulls at least one of these (and probably more than that) near the end of the series when he sends King Pryderi, his war leader, to dispatch Dallben, the greatest enchanter in Prydain. Arawn likely knew that Pryderi harbored traitorous intent towards him, and therefore manipulated the situation to his favor; If Pryderi succeeded, Arawn was rid of Dallben, and if he failed, he was rid of a future rival. Arawn won either way.
- In Douglas Adams' third Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy book, Life, the Universe and Everything, Hactar either counts on, or at least anticipates, the failure of his original plan to manipulate the people of Krikkit into detonating the supernova bomb and destroying the universe. While describing My Brilliant Evil Plan to Trillian and Arthur, he completes a gradual replacement of Arthur's belongings that's been happening throughout the book by planting a second, disguised bomb on him, then manipulates the situation further so that, after they've destroyed him, the heroes proceed to go back in time several days, putting Arthur in a position where he'll trigger the bomb by accident, not only destroying the universe but erasing their original victory. Hactar even gloats for a split second when Trillian asks him how he feels about having failed with Krikkit by whispering "have I failed?", which goes unnoticed until later. The universe ends up being saved only by the craziest of blind luck: Hactar hadn't foreseen Arthur learning how to fly, which turns out to be the one monkey wrench that breaks an otherwise unstoppable chain of events.
- In the Vorkosigan series by Lois Mc Master Bujold, the main antagonist of The Vor Game, Commander Cavilo, pretty much defines this trope with "Don't choose a path that leads to victory, choose so that all paths lead to victory." She ruins it by trying to double-cross everybody, including all four sides of what was previously a promising Mexican Standoff.
- The Bastard Operator From Hell series has the title character pull of quite a few of his own. Is it any wonder he's classified as a Magnificent Bastard?
- In "Siege of Darkness", Lolth orders an attack on Mithral Hall because Menzoberranzan having to control such a remote territory will result in a lot of chaos in the city - and this is what she wants. When the attack fails, she seems to be even happier, because with all the losses and failures, there will be even more chaos.
- Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish seems to heavily imply that the entire War of the Five Kings in A Song of Ice and Fire is his own personal Xanatos Gambit, although he also claims to be some kind of ultra-Machivelli who sometimes carries out contradictory and apparently self-defeating plans purely to divert suspicion from himself, possibly a hint that lots of things have transpired that he wasn't expecting. The purpose of his Gambit still remains vague, however, since he arguably had far more power and influence in King's Landing as the Master of Coin as he does as the Lord Protector of the Vale, even if he does succeed in restoring Sansa as the ruler of the North.
- Not necessarily. As Master of Coin, he could be deposed and executed any time the King or his Hand decided he was too dangerous to keep around. Now, though, in addition to being Protector of the Vale, he's also been named Lord Paramount of the Riverlands. If his plans work out the way he explained them to Sansa, he'll control the North through her, the Vale of Arryn through Harry the Heir, and the Riverlands directly — three of the Seven Kingdoms. He also has a hold over the Tyrells because he knows of their part in Joffrey's assassination (more direct than his own, as it was the Queen of Thorns who plucked the poison crystal from Sansa's tiara and dropped it in Joff's wine, whereas nothing about the assassination can be traced directly to Littlefinger); if he felt it useful, he could easily touch off a new war between the Rock and the Reach. The real question is whether Littlefinger can outmatch Varys, who's been playing the Game of Thrones since before Petyr was born, or Prince Doran Martell, whose own deep-laid plans have yet to impinge on his.
- In Night Watch, this happens in every. single. story. Plus, they're all planned years in advance.
- It's something that has a habit of cropping up when each side has multiple precognitives making their plans.
- In The Malazan Book of the Fallen many events are later revealed to have been orchestrated by the Crippled God for his own purposes, with only a few unforseen events (such as Karsa killing Rhulad and rejecting - again - the CG's offer to become its servant) cropping up. The CG is also revealed to have several plans in action at any one time, and it may even be that his 'defeats' are just part of the overall Xanatos Gambit to achieve his freedom.
- Several gambits are pulled off in the literature surrounding Warhammer 40000. In the Eisenhorn trilogy, the lead character is given a covert message from what appears to be one of his closest allies. He then goes off to meet said ally only to be confronted by a minor villainess who appears to have him utterly cornered by a group of well armed mooks. Eisenhorn then manages to get the information he required from the villainess, only to reveal that he knew it was a trap all along and is pyshically controlling a dead body remotely. He then wipes out the entire group in a massive psychic explosion. By now, Eisenhorn has sauntered into the Magnificent Bastard Camp.
- A good-guy one goes off in Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts novel Sabbat Martyr. Saint Sabbat reincarnates on the otherwise unremarkable planet Herodor. If Chaos forces are diverted to attack the planet and kill her, it takes pressure off the overstretched main forces of the Imperial Crusade. If they do not, the Imperials still get a large, possibly table-turning morale boost from her presence. Either way, the good guys benefit.
- In William King's Space Wolf novel Ragnor's Claw, the climax reveals a Xanatos Gambit by a Sealed Evil In A Can.
- In the Michael Crichton book Prey, the hero puts a virus in the fire sprinkler system, which will kill the villains when activated. The villains respond by deactivating the safety systems, so the sprinklers won't go off. Turns out that's exactly what the hero was counting on — turning off the safety systems never ends well.
- The reverse is true in William Marshall's Sci Fi. A trap is due to be set off by the sprinkler system therefore the villain starts a fire.
- All the events of The Saga of Darren Shan are a complex plot created by Mr. Tiny to destabilise the world into chaos, death and eventual apocalypse, purely for his own amusement.
- James Swallow's Warhammer 40000 Blood Angels novel Deus Encarmine and Deus Sanguinius revolve about a Xanatos Gambit to bring the Chapter over to Chaos.
- Palpatine's plan in Outbound Flight. Jedi Master C'baoth wants the final approval for Outbound Flight, which involves fifty thousand civilians and eighteen Jedi. Palpatine wants to give the go-ahead so he can have the project ambushed and destroyed outside of Republic space, getting a good eighteen Jedi out of the way, but at this point in time he can't safely push something like that through on his own. He suggests that if C'baoth resolves this one conflict for him, he might be able to do something, and arranges a dispute between natives and a corporation. An agent is sent to fan up a resistance among the natives, and a missile is launched towards the meeting where C'baoth and the elements of the dispute are. C'baoth stops the missile using the Force, then basically bullies the people at the meeting into resolving the dispute. With sudden heroic status, C'baoth's Outbound Flight is approved and launches.
- 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.
- In The Dresden Files ninth book, White Night, Lara Raith, acting leader of the White Court of Vampires, pulls one of these. Essentially, she comes up with a plan to wipe out the White Council of Wizards and usher in a new age in which vampires would rule supreme. She then leaks this plan to the heads of Houses Malvora and Skavis, who proceed to put it into action, only to be foiled by series' titular wizard. However, Lara later admits to Harry that she intended all along for him to defeat Malvora and Skavis, as doing so removed her greatest potential rivals and cemented her hold over the White Court.
- Nicodemus of The Dresden Files is also good at this. In Small Favor, he kidnaps Marcone, ostensibly to gain control of his criminal empire. Harry plays by the rules, treats it as a conflict between two recognized members of the supernatural community and brings in Ivy to act as arbitrator, but that's what Nicodemus wanted all along so he could both capture her incredibly vast power, and discredit Harry to his allies because he got Ivy into that mess. Harry offers Nicodemus custody of Excalibur in exchange for both of them, but when they are to make the exchange, Nicodemus shows Harry that he has been having them brutally tortured to set off Harry's Berserk Button so he would use Excalibur in anger, removing its holy powers, which Nicodemus couldn't do on his own. Harry sees through that only because he's made that mistake once before. After the successful rescue, Nicodemus consoles himself that his minions who did most of the work were suspected traitors anyway so he doesn't mind that some of them were killed in the fight or Ivy bears a grudge against them personally.
- And in the following book, Harry pulls one himself. He invites the White Court vampires and the Council of wizards to an island, each for different reasons. He knows that a third, mysterious group will also attack, but he's set things up beforehand so that the Council and the White Court can put aside their antagonism just long enough to gang up on the third. Even working together they might have been beaten by the third if not for Harry's newfound spirit friend. The third faction's mole in the Council escapes, but Harry later reveals that he had hired a private investigator to take pictures of everyone on the way to the meeting, identifying the mole for the first time.
- John Scalzi's Old Man's War series, with especial emphasis on "The Lost Colony".
- In Deltora Quest, the Shadow Lord pulls off one of these in the third series.
- Firstly, he uses the communication crystal, that he normally uses to co-ordinate operations with the various servants he planted in the palace, to taunt, distract and goad new king Lief into destroying it.
- The crystal is rigged to spit out the plot of the Four Sisters, essentially the reasons why the people seem to be starving. Knowing that the king would set off to destroy them, the Shadow Lord also planted a map to the first Sister, underneath the crystal, and maps to the next Sisters, near the previous Sister.
- On the off-chance that all the Sisters would be destroyed (nearly impossible since they're apparently only vulnerable to fire from the [now-extinct] dragons), a giant near-indestructible blob of evil goo, placed in the dead center of Deltora, was set to awaken and start to expand and devour everything.
- Therefore, if the Sisters were destroyed, the blob would eat everything in sight and the land would belong to the Shadow Lord, on account of the fact that nothing else could live there. If the Sisters were not destroyed, then everyone would starve to death and the Shadow Lord could just march in and take over. Either way, he wins.
- Of course, he still doesn't win. He forgot to make his evil goo flame retardant...and Leif had seven dragons up his sleeve.
- He knew full well about that particular monkey wrench. Which is why he took steps to get the dragons out of the way first, banking on the fact that Lief & co. wouldn't find them, or be able to help them if they did. They did, he lost.
- Sauron pulls one of these against Ar-Pharazon of Numenor in The Silmarillion. By goading Pharazon into assembling the largest army in history and setting out to make war on the Valar, he sets up his defeat nicely by pitting him against opponents far beyond his league. In the unlikely event that Pharazon actually wins Sauron's still ahead, as the Valar are his enemies as well. Overall, things go very smoothly (sure, Sauron loses his physical body, but it was just an avatar, so his spirit survives). Pity for him that not all the Numenoreans were dead, though...
- The core plot of Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn is a massive gambit by the Big Bad Storm King involving the titular three swords. Embodying the most powerful magic in the land of Osten Ard, and in response to an ancient prophecy, the protagonists see the swords as the only things that can, if brought together, stop the Storm King from returning to the world. Of course, this is a trick to get them to deliver the swords to the villains, so their power can be used to summon him. Throughout the story, a major portion of the villains' effort is spent killing off anyone with enough knowledge to unravel the plan before it can be completed.
- Pei Shan-wei and Pei Kau-yung in David Weber's Safehold books set one up after two megalomaniacs were placed in charge of a project to save the remainder of humanity from extinction. As anticipated, these leaders, Langhorne and Bédard, set themselves up as Archangels of God and created an entire religion around themselves, all but ignoring the original goal of the colony's formation(getting humanity into a position to re-challenge the aliens that nearly destroyed them). To this end, they set up a robot with a woman's personality downloaded into it to make it ridiculously human and after several centuries went by, awakened her to bring the original plan back on track. The second book, By Schism Rent Asunder, also revealed a second Gambit in play by Shan-wei. She freed some of the first generation colonists from the brainwashing that Langhorne used and kept the knowledge alive to a select few down the generations until Nimue's arrival shook things up.
- Mornelithe Falconsbane in Mercedes Lackey's "Mage Winds" trilogy, and how - he manages three by the midpoint of the first book. Note that this book was written in 1991, predating Gargoyles (and therefore Xanatos himself) by three years.
- Saint Dane, the antagonist of the Pendragon series by D. J. Mac Hale, pulls an almost perfect gambit in virtually every book.
- In Brandon Sandersons' Mistborn we find out at the end of book 2 that The entire plot of the first and second books were engineered by Ruin in order to get Vin to release him from the Well of Ascension. Also, the search for the Lord Rulers' Atium stockpile which took up a good part of book three was yet another gambit by Ruin. Although to be fair, the Lord Ruler and the Terris prophets had planned for this eventuality.
- Lord Vetinari, of course... he's all about these. They're almost too numerous to list, though a few do stand out to this troper:
- The deepest, darkest cell in his dungeon with a huge and fiendishly complicated locking mechanism is of course the first place any would-be usurper would throw him... without hoting that the locking mechanism is on the inside, making the occupant possible the safest man in Anhk-Morpork.
- His codes and ciphers are deliberately weakend to allow his enemies to be able to read them given a suitably fiendish expenditure of effort... how else would Vetinari know that they knew what he wanted them to think he was hiding from them?
- The end of Jingo where he surrenders to the Klatchians, resulting in the Big Bad's grasp on power collapsing, and the dispersal of his enormous army that would have easily crushed Ank Morpork, all in exchange for an island that promptly sank beneath the waves anyway.
Live Action TV
- Both 24 and Heroes seem to crank out about a dozen of these per episode, by both the good guys and the bad guys.
- Heroes third season seems to be heading towards a Thirty Xanatos Pileup as every character seems to be working for themselves, one or both of the opposing factions and to help someone else out.
- This is the plot of pretty much every episode of Leverage, usually done by the good guys.
- In an episode of Law And Order Special Victims Unit, a psychiatrist reveals 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.
- In the episode Legacy of Law And Order Criminal Intent, a student executes an extraordinarily complex Xanatos Gambit, with the goal of removing everyone he considers unworthy of attending the prestigious school he's in, along with a teacher who dared to give less than A's. Goren gets him to confess by playing on his desire to show his dad that he could formulate plans himself.
- In another Law And Order Criminal Intent episode, Cuba Libre, imprisoned drug lord Dempsey Powers arranges three hits on behalf of parolee Milton Winters. Winters, before being released on parole, gives Powers a deck of playing cards. The deck, which is short four cards, is actually a hit list. Three of the missing cards represent targets: the Queen of Diamonds (his wife), the Jack of Clubs (his lawyer, Jack Duvall), and the Deuce of Spades (his son, Milt Jr.) The fourth card, the Ace of Hearts, corresponds to no discernible target. After the detectives threaten to frame Dempsey's son for the murders (playing on his paranoia), Powers (who was acquitted of shooting nine cops after claiming they were in the drug trade with him) tells Det. Goren that the Ace of Hearts represents Milt's heart doctor and agrees to testify against Milt before the grand jury. However, the detectives later deduce that Powers is lying; the Ace of Hearts target was actually Corrections Officer Tony Sorvino's ex's new husband (Powers knew Sorvino from his old neighborhood). Dempsey's plan was to escape from a prison van with Sorvino's help then flee to Cuba with his son Taye, which would also render Dempsey's grand jury testimony inadmissible in Milt's trial. But Goren, Eames, and ADA Ronald Carver manage to thwart the plan.
- In one episode of Automan, a plot is foiled and a huge lump of evidence is stored in 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.
- Captain Janeway of Star Trek Voyager managed one in the episode "Counterpoint". Being constant good samaritans, they decided to risk violating an agreement with a telepath-hating empire by transporting a group of benign telepaths on board. Being subjected to routine searches, they found a sneaky way of hiding them through a transporter loop. The commander of these search teams eventually came alone, claiming to be defecting. After a long series of complicated story plots, (It Makes Sense In Context), he rejoined the search team and relayed his findings to his crew, this being his goal the entire time. But it was soon revealed that the crew knew he was going to betray them, so they played along to distract them while the telepaths used a shuttlecraft to escape to a safe location.
- Plus Seska was a master at this tactic, especially in the way she captures Voyager in "Basics, Part I".
- In the Star Trek The Original Series episode "Amok Time", Spock's bride-to-be T'Pring manages this by forcing the infamous "mating fight" between Spock and Kirk. Her plan? To rig the challenge so that, regardless of its outcome, she'd be with the person she really wants to be with. In more detail, she knew she could only get a divorce through the challenge, but didn't want to risk losing the man she wanted to marry by naming him her champion, so she chose Kirk, knowing that he wouldn't accept her as his mate should he win (despite Kirk's womanizing ways), and Spock would either release her from the marriage should he win out of shame of killing his friend to get her and the stigma having a wife who dared to challenge the marriage would bring, or be too busy off in space to keep her from an affair, should he decide to continue the marriage.
- One of the few villains to survive from the first series of Bugs, Jean Daniel, used a Xanatos Gambit to escape prison in the second series. He got privileges for good behaviour in the prison in order to be allowed to invest the prison's funds to help raise money for a swimming pool, in the process funding several plots which the Bugs team got wound up in, making investments that required the team to succeed in stopping the various plots to make a profit. He then used the funds he raised in excess of the swimming pool target to buy the prison.
- In I Claudius, Magnificent Bitch Livia is the Queen of this trope. She maneuvers her son Tiberius onto the Imperial throne through high-level political scheming... and copious amounts of poison.
- Explosively used in the episode Automatic for the People of The Sarah Connor Chronicles, where it turns out that anything Action Mom Sarah does regarding the nuclear plant results in a victory for Sky Net (stop the dangerous nuclear power plant test? Skynet wins; then the resistance can't use that plant as a base in the future, as it will be shut down. Ignore the dangerous nuclear power plant? Skynet wins; thousands of people die in the ensuing explosion. Prevent the rigged explosion? Skynet wins; the Terminator Corrupt Corporate Executive waltzes in and takes it over).
- Cromartie also shows his manipulative planning skills in "The Mousetrap", in which he kidnaps Charley's wife to lure Sarah and Derek out to an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere. The trap was designed to lure them out to isolate John, and it was made blatant so that Sarah would call John and warn him. That allowed Cromartie to tap into their cell phones, get the Connors' safe code, and direct John to a place where Cromartie could ambush him. Then Cromartie triggers the actual bombs at the abandoned house. Just as planned.
- Lightly done in Phoenix Nights, in which club owner Brian Potter seemingly backs a team he picks himself, to enter in a pub quiz for a year's supply of lager. His rival then sabotages them so they lose, however Brian has selected another team to win, behind his rival's back. Of course, this backfires when it's non-alcoholic lager....
- Standard operating procedure for the Impossible Missions Force. One of the best examples was a second season episode where the IMF's ultimate plan hinged on the ability of a foreign agent to see through their operation and figure out they were framing someone.
- Saffron pulls one of these in the Firefly episode "Trash", only to fall victim to the crew's own Xanatos Gambit. Or so Inara claims. Actually Inara was a "just in case" precaution. But she enjoyed making Saffron think otherwise.
- In Doctor Who, the Doctor uses these. e.g, in 'Remembrance of the Daleks', the seventh Doctor seems to be trying to keep the Daleks from getting hold of the Hand of Omega (plan A) but when they do get to use it, he reveals that he rigged it so that when the Daleks tried to use it, they'd blow up their own sun (plan B). A few weeks later, he pulled the exact same trick on the Cybermen.
- The entire "Key to Time" series with the fourth doctor is a Xanatos Gambit. The Black Guardian poses as the White Guardian and tells the Doctor to assemble the Key to Time and not to let the Black Guardian get a hold of it. In the last episode, "The Armageddon Factor," he enlists another lackey who the Doctor eventually defeats, but that defeat turns out to be part of the Black Guardian's plan as well.
- In the Arrested Development episode "Making a Stand", Michael plans to teach George Sr. a lesson by faking his kidnapping, but GOB tips him off enabling him to teach Michael a lesson by making it appear that he had blown a man's arm off with a gun he grabbed in an effort to defend himself. All of this was part of Michael and GOB's underlying plan, to then pretend to fight so that GOB could appear to push Michael off the balcony to teach George Sr. a lesson. Buster then picked up a gun that happened to be left laying on the floor, and a cop came in and pretended to blow his hand off in an effort to teach everyone not to use one-armed men to scare people.
- Most of the plots in Leverage involve at least one if not more of these gambits on both sides of the scam. The pilot involved a chain of at least three.
- Michael Scofield of Prison Break is amazingly good at these, though he keeps getting caught up in the Thirty Xanatos Pileups of those around him. A major example is in Hell Or High Water, when his plan succeeds in helping him escape Sona and ridding himself of Bagwell, Bellick, and Lechero. It doesn't work out completely, unfortunately.
- Don Self uses one in the episode ''Just Business" when he and Gretchen attack the hideout of Michael's Nakama to retrieve the missing component of Schylla. The attempt masked their secondary objective, which was to secretly plant a surveillance device within the hideout, enabling them to know where the component is hidden (which they later retrieve).
- Virtually every episode of Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister features at least one Xanatos Gambit conducted by Sir Humphrey and/or Hacker.
- Hogan's Heroes was a TV series based around Allied PO Ws playing humorous Xanatos Gambits on their Nazi captors to sabotage their efforts in the war.
- The fourth season finale of Supernatural sees the culmination of an epic Xanatos Gambit planned out by and executed by Lilith, Azazeal, Ruby and Lucifer himself, with the aim of freeing Lucifer and starting the Apocalypse.
- Of all people, Rita Repulsa of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers has one of these. In the season 3 two-parter "A Ranger Catastrophe", she carries out a typical "separate Tommy from his teammates, send down a Monster Of The Week" plot, but the aim of the plot is not necesarrily to destroy the Rangers, but to ingratiate her spy, the brainwashed girl Kat, into the Rangers' social circle.
- Tony Soprano is quite good at pulling these. It's lampshaded by the restaurant owner Artie Bucco after he's fallen into debt with Tony and he agrees to let Artie help pay by forgiving his enormous restaurant tab. Artie notes Tony's ability to "analyze all the possible scenarios and outcomes," and figure out that "worst case scenario, you eat for free."
- The plot of the drama G.B.H. turns out to be a massive Xanatos Gambit on the part of the Socialist organisation Michael Murray allies himself with, who turn out to actually be MI 5 spies working to discredit the far-left. Their plot relies on their attempt to bring about a city-wide strike succeeding, racial tensions being stirred up by their actions and Murray having a near breakdown. All these things happen, although at the end it is hinted that the plot may be uncovered, due to Murray's paranoid taping of his conversations.
- In the Season 2 premiere of Torchwood, "Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang," Captain John Hart manages to use a Xanatos Gambit to get the Torchwood team to find several radiation cluster bombs that hid pieces of a hologram device that would tell him the location of an Arcadian Diamond, an incredibly rare jewel. But it turns out that his selfishness is his downfall, as he was the Xanatos Sucker of a gambit by the woman he thought had the diamond: there was no Arcadian Diamond—just a bomb that the woman had created to latch onto her killer, who turned out to be Captain John, and attach itself to the person's DNA. But Captain John pulls one last trick: he handcuffs himself to Gwen and swallows the keys, forcing the Torchwood team to save him.
- In The Outer Limits, cyber-terorist Zig Zag lives in a world where pretty much everything is controlled by about eight super-servers. People are identified by DNA-reading chips implanted in their hands. Zig Zag fakes his death reprograms his chip to set himself up as a pro-establishment guy working for the company that maintains the servers, even working under the very guy that was trying to catch him. Four years later it reverts to the proper setting, and the opportunity is used to steal Zig Zag's files. Zig Zag rejoins the movement and holds the building hostage, threatening to blow it up. At the end, it looks as if he's foiled. His explosives are disarmed, his boss takes the detonator, and he's surrounded by armed men. He reveals that by downloading his chip data into the servers, they will overload and explode, blowing up the city, as soon as his former boss uses the detonator "in his hand." Naturally the boss swipes his DNA chip to prevent this. Turns out Zig Zag was being a bit more literal than they thought. His chip is the detonator. Cue Oh Crap moment.
- Actually, this is pretty much how every New Outer Limits episode went.
- The new Battlestar Galactica averted this (mostly) in a somewhat disappointing fashion: for the first three seasons, the show's prologue informed us that the robotic Cylons "had a Plan" in their pursuit of the remains of humanity. The Cylons' stated goal was to Kill All Humans, but the prologue combined with actions which didn't seem to fit with the stated motive (the Cylons, who cannot reproduce naturally and are trying to figure out how to stave off extinction, allow the only pregnant Cylon ever to defect to Galactica, then spend the rest of the season trying to blow up the fleet at the same time) had a good portion of the online fanbase convinced that there was an as-yet-unrevealed Plan B waiting in the wings. Alas, by season four, the show's creators dropped the last line from the prologue after revealing that it had been added due to executive pressure to have a hook to draw in new viewers. In the end, it turned out that the Cylons' goal had been pretty much what they'd said it was all along. The aversion was subverted slightly in that it turned out that one of the Cylon characters ( Brother Cavil) did have an additional motive for launching the genocidal war, but since it was confined to one person and not representative of the Cylons as a whole, it debatable whether it fulfills this trope.
- The Cabal in Sanctuary breathe this trope. They engineered a plague that would wipe out abnormals so that Magnus and her buddies would get vampire blood to cure it. They they take Magnus' daughter hostage in the middle to brainwash her and activate her inherited teleportation powers to steal said blood once it's been retrieved.
- Decades of experience has made Diana Trent extremely good at these.
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.
Tabletop Games
- Falling astray of a vast mesh of Xanatos Gambits, and thus getting manipulated in a million directions at once until you finally just give up, is a common occupational hazard amongst Shadowrunners.
- Subverted in Nobilis, where the antagonist's response to every defeat in one of the game's short fiction pieces is to cackle and proclaim, "Exactly as I planned". The piece ends with the protagonist standing over his grave, saying "You never really got the hang of planning, did you?"
- Everything that has ever happened in the universe and beyond is the result of Tzeentch's plans. Including those plans of his that have been foiled. In fact, if you try to help him, he benefits, if you try to hinder him, he benefits, and if you do neither, he benefits.
- Though the C'Tan Deceiver and the Laughing God aren't exactly slouches in this department either.
- Someone writing for White Wolf must be a troper — the Seers of the Throne Sourcebook for Mage actually presents an antagonist with a listed ability of "Xanatos Gambit!"
- The Fourth Edition Dungeons And Dragons splatbook Martial Power introduces resourceful warlords, an alternative to inspirational or tactical warlords, who are fond of small-scale versions of these. Most resourceful powers offer benefits for successful attacks and different albeit modest advantages upon missing or not using an offense maneuver that round.
- Mephistopholes, at the end of 3rd edition, was essentially betting his entire position as Archduke of the 8th level of Hell on a Xanatos Gambit; provide incredible amounts of power to mortals (through control over Hellfire) for almost nothing, but Devils in the D&D universe draw their power almost exclusively from the torment of damned souls, so if/when heroes defeat these evil cults, Mephistopholes reaps their souls and receives a massive boost in power.
Video Games
- The Legacy of Kain series has nearly the entire cast playing this trope.
- 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 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 his client in the trial at hand — causing that client to confess to a different crime, allowing von Karma to prosecute him for a more personal reason.
- In the second case of the third game, Phoenix manages to prove that his client, Ron De Lite, didn't commit a theft by proving that he was at another place and showing proof that Detective Atmey did it. However, as it turns out, a murder took place at the exact place and time of De Lite's alibi, and as a result Atmey, the real murderer, is given an alibi from Phoenix proving he was the thief.
- The G-Man in Half Life 2 is running a huge Xanatos Gambit, involving people and organizations from several dimensions and spanning years. He doesn't even try to hide it. Which is the only reason we know about it, because there's still not even the slightest hint what he actually want's to archieve with it.
- 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's far, far, far more likely, however, that the song is exactly what it seems, and GLaDOS is simply saying that the whole thing was a test in order to save face.
- Given that the ending reveals a ludicrous amount of backup AI cores, she was obviously well prepared for the possibility of being destroyed sooner or later. The whole game may have been a Xanatos gambit to get rid of the Morality Core restraining her.
- The World Ends With You does this one well enough. As a mission for Shiki's sixth day, you have to get a new pin, which looks like a red version of your Player Pin, to be advertised at the Scramble Crossing for enough people to notice. Congratulations, you just set in motion the big bad's plans to brainwash all of Shibuya, and you don't figure this out until near the end of the game. Then again, you didn't have a choice; it's either that or erasure.
- In ''Splatterhouse 3]], the second-to-last boss is the ruler of Hell, the Evil One; according to the Terror Mask, destroying him is the only way to save Rick's family (currently under demonic attack). Once Rick defeats the Evil One, the Big Bad thanks him for having removed the last obstacle to its own plans to conquer the world. Rick then has to fight the Big Bad in a Battle In The Center Of The Mind to stop its ambition.
- {{Saint'sRow}} even gives you a chance to be devious. Early on, your character's arsenal is limited to what you can afford, which sadly, isn't much. However, if you trigger a police incident in an area the Saint's control, the local forces (i.e. your forces,) will still fight the police, and draw much of the heat off of you, and provided you keep the pressure on, the forces sent after you will escalate accordingly, and bring better weapons, including decent starting handguns, shotguns, assault rifles, and even hand grenades. After your pockets are filled to your hearts content with dangerous things, let the police kill you. You will be deposited, safe and sound, at a hospital, with your new set of toys completely intact, with nothing but a few dollars missing. Or you could just escape to the nearest Forgive & Forget. Either way, weapons.
- In Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Darth Vader sends his secret apprentice on a number of missions to prepare for overthrowing Palpatine/Sidious, starting with seeking out the last Jedi to kill them. Furthermore, once this mission is complete, Vader then turns loose his apprentice and sends him out to gather "an alliance of rebels" to rally against the Emperor, giving them the perfect chance to strike. It turns out that the entire thing is a plot by Vader and Sidious to smoke out potential rebels by giving them someone to rally round. This backfires, resulting in the Rebel Alliance forming, leading to the eventual overthrow of the Empire. Whoops.
- In Blue Dragon, at the end of the second disc, the Big Bad reveals that your Shadows are fragments of his, and you've just spent two-thirds of the game Level Grinding them for him. Then he takes them back, powering himself up and leaving you defenseless.
- By the end of Super Paper Mario, Dimentio winds up pulling a textbook Xanatos Gambit on you and becomes the real final boss. In the pre-fight speech he even says "If they make greeting cards for helping with evil plans, I owe you one."
- There's one in Paper Mario, The Thousand Year Door. Knowing that Mario was heading for the last Crystal Star, they put it inside their main base. Either Mario wins and opens the Thousand Year door for them, or he loses and they take the six stars he already collected.
- NIS uses this trope extensively. Even good characters use these.
- Etna's plans in episode 5 of the first game. Laharl acts as the Xanatos Sucker
- Laharl's plans to "casually" stroll through Blair Forest to the Heart of Evil with the "deed" to the title of Overlord. Despite the one hiccup, it works, and all the competitors have either bailed or died.
- The entire plot is a Xanatos Gambit performed by Sereph Lamington. Flonne (part of this gambit because of her loyalty and his level of trust in her), Laharl, and Vulcanus (Lamington knew he was up to no good the whole time, used misdeeds to his advantage) act as the suckers.
- Super Hero Aurum's gambit to fight Mao at full power. Backfires in the Human World ending, foiled in normal ending.
- Knights Of The Old Republic : The sequel gives us Darth Traya. Not quite on Revan's scale, though we experience hers firsthand. The only "big reveal" at the end of the game is that the events have been one big Xanatos Gambit by her in the name of testing the Exile.
- Not quite on Revan's scale? She gets all her enemies to kill themselves or each other, and even when she's defeated at the end, she still wins.
- Ludveck from Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn has one of these when he lets Elincia, the same queen whose power he wants to usurp, imprison him. The reason for doing this? His imprisonment was the signal for his soldiers to pretend to run in a mess trying to escape, which would naturally cause the merciful queen to spare their lives. Then they were to threaten Elincia with the execution of her sister, and the only way this could be averted was for her to cede the crown to Ludveck. This was set up in case Ludveck failed to outright kill Elincia; that's right, he used a Xanatos Gambit as a BACKUP PLAN. Too bad for Ludveck and his otherwise brilliant plan that Bastian planned ahead...
- Pretty much the entire plot of the Morrowind expansion Tribunal is one big Xanatos Gambit set into motion by Almalexia.
- One of Rune Scape quests, Shadow of The Storm revolves around this. A cultist wants you to summon a demon for you, apparently after you slew him, he tells you to do another ritual where you say the ritual backwards. It turns out the true intention was not to summon a demon to this world but rather allow him to return to his realm where his powers are that of a Cosmic Horror. It took one more battle with the accursed demon to actually kill him for good.
- In Destroy All Humans! Path of the Furon The Master stages a Xanatos Gambit in order to over throw Emperor Meningitis and claim the throne.
- The Divine Crusaders War qualifies, due to the simple fact that, no matter who wins, Earth will be protected. If the player fails to defeat the DC, it's implied that the DC will defend Earth when the real threat (it depends on the timeline) arrives. If the player beats the DC, it's leader will mention that the heroes are strong enough to take over the defense of Earth (whether the player is skilled enough is another matter entirely...).
- Dr. Eggman pulls a big one in the opening scene of Sonic Unleashed. Sonic is raiding his giant space fleet when Eggman shows up to take him down personally. Eggman eventually gains the upper hand, forcing Sonic to transform into Super Sonic, after which he is beaten effortlessly. He uses his escape pod to lure Super Sonic back to the control room where, after pitifully begging for mercy, goads him into stepping into a trap that drains his Chaos energy to power the ship's main cannon, which he then uses to blow up the earth. Naturally, he planned the whole thing.
- The human campaign of Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos is essentially one big Xanatos Gambit played by the Lich King in order to corrupt Prince Arthas and turn him into his champion, and Arthas runs straight into it.
- Prince LaCroix runs one of these. You play a fledgling vampire, who, for some reason, is the only agent LaCroix has available. As the game progresses, you realise that that LaCroix has only just taken command of the city and has little or no control over older, more capable vampires (and support for his political faction is at an all-time low.) You're also young and weak enough that he's easily able to Dominate you into taking on missions that seem suicidal. The kicker comes when you realise that La Croix is actively trying to kill you. He wants you gone. Your very existence flouts his own laws and is a huge sign of weakness for him. But after Nines Rodriguez, the Anarch leader, intervened at your Sire's trial, he can't kill you publicly without seriously pissing off a very large, powerful political sect from which he still hasn't entirely reclaimed the city. So instead, he sends you on suicide missions, starting with taking out the Sabbat warehouse. If you die, he wins, because the symbol of his weakness is gone. If you survive, he wins, by eliminating his enemies and advancing his own agenda. When the player starts to become allies with the Anarchs, he allies with the shapeshifting leader of the Kuei Jin to make you think the Anarchs are working against you and the Anarchs think that you have betrayed them. And when the player gets too strong, he calls a blood hunt and sets every vampire in the state on them.
- And afterall that, it turns out LaCroix is actually a Xanatos Sucker for Smiling Jack and Caine, who have both been enacting a plan that relies on nothing more than the natural paranoia vampires are prone to when an ancient, myth shrouded coffin that might contain one of their progenitors arrives. Everyone is so predictable in how they'll react to this that they merely plant the rumor themselves that the coffin is something more than a simple sarcophagus for an ancient human king, and this allows them to play everyone like fiddles. Beckett is the only one who realizes what's going on, but only because he was examining the coffin closely and discovered what was really inside.
- Pulled off in the last game of Kirby Super Star, "Milky Way Wishes." The sun and moon begin to fight, throwing Popstar's day-night cycles out of balance. Marx, an adorable jester, tells Kirby that in order to make peace between the sun and the moon, he must ask the wish-granting comet Nova, who can only be summoned once he collects the power from all the neighboring planets. This was all Marx's plan. He was the one who tricked the sun and moon into fighting, knowing that Kirby would try to solve the problem by doing all the dirty work for him and summoning Nova. Once Kirby does summon Nova, Marx knocks him aside before he can make a wish, then wishes to control Popstar.
- Sigma pulls off (or attempts to) several in Mega Man X. In the fourth game, for example, he orchaestrated the Hunter/Repliforce conflict in order to take control over Repliforce's Kill Sat.
- A classic example of one by Richter in Tales Of Symphonia: Dawn Of The New World: the party discovers that his master plan is to reverse the worlds of the living and dead in order to ressurrect his best friend. However, after defeating him they learn that his actual plan was to open the gate between worlds long enough for his friend to come back to life, then seal the gate to prevent anything else from coming through, using his own body as the lock for all eternity. After this is revealed, another Xanatos Gambit is put into play by Emil, who pretends to be Ratatosk enacting his grand plan to destroy the world the same way that Richter was going to. This is so that he could pull a Heroic Sacrifice: his friends would kill him, revert him to Core Form, and then use him to seal the gate.
- The plot Final Fantasy X hinges on the discovery that every time the creature Sin is destroyed, the very act of destroying it leads to it rejuvenation. This is designed by the Big Bad to distract anyone from actually attacking him.
- In Final Fantasy IV, Scarmiglione, a minor Archfiend at best, still manages to pull one on the heroes. His goal is to kill them; so he attacks them, with an army of zombies as backup. If he and his zombies win, good for him. If he should die to Cecil's sword, his magic will kick in, and make him into an undead monstrosity many times more powerful than he was before, making it easier to kill him.
- Before the final mission of Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception, Intrepid Reporter Albert Genette notes that Leasath commanding officer Diego Navarro was playing one of these: Although his primary goal of conquering Aurelia fails, he still succeeds in increasing arms exports for the military-industrial exports. You as Gryphus One prevent him from succeeding fully by busting up his Fenrir superfighters before he can profit from selling them off too.
- In the original Dawn of War game, Blood Ravens battle the Chaos Marines on Tartarus. However, when the Chaos Forces are seemingly defeated it turns out that Tartarus was in fact a gigantic altar and the blood spilled by all combatants was an offering required to awake the powerful daemonic entity.
- Halo: Only humans can activate the rings, so the Covenant must capture one and use them. In 2, they allow Keyes and Johnson to reach the Index first, and then move in for capture. In 3, Johnson goes to deactivate the third shield tower, giving the Covies the chance to overwhelm and capture him. (The humans should have learned this already) Master Chief is too late to stop them, so Keyes goes into the citadel after him, resulting in her demise.
Web Comics
- In The Last Days Of Foxhound, the spirit of Big Boss temporarily possessed the body of his clone "son", Liquid Snake. Big Boss acts like he plans to do this permanently and use Liquid's body to fulfill his plans of freeing the world from the grip of an Ancient Conspiracy. However his true hope is that Liquid, terrified by the possibility of spending forever in limbo and being forced to admit that Big Boss was better than he was, would be motivated to wise up, become more capable, and challenge Big Boss for possession of his own body. Thus making him better equipped to carry on Big Boss' legacy than he was before, and which he goes on to do until the end of the comic.
- Okay, technically it's the same plan as in the game, but the rehash of Psycho Mantis's scheme to activate Metal Gear contains almost every feasible Xanatos based trope (including pileups and gilligans mixed with dramatic irony for the reader).
- Employed by Nale in The Order of the Stick when he lures the Order to Cliffport by kidnapping Roy's sister Julia, then has his new Linear Guild attack. The Guild eventually gets defeated, but while they were distracted, Nale swapped places with his good twin, Elan—leading the Order to think they had won, when in fact the outcome was exactly what Nale had been seeking (his brother shipped off to jail and him safely undercover in the Order).
- Redcloak outlines a much higher stakes Xanatos Gambit in the prequel story Start Of Darkness: he intends to capture one of the five Gates that holds back the world's Sealed Evil In A Can so his god, the Dark One, can use it to blackmail the other gods into giving the goblins equal standing among the player races (human, elf, dwarf, etc.). If he should accidentally unleash this Eldritch Abomination and unravel all of Creation in the process, the gods can then remake the world - but this time around, the Dark One would have a say in how the goblins were treated.
- In Goblin Hollow, during the Bank Robbery arc (more or less starting HERE, Ben and Lily get entangled in a bank heist which is only part of the guest villain's double and possibly triple-fakeout plot which involves multiple simultaneous armed robberies, a mysterious pearl necklace, a jade box full of Boggarts and an army of mooks in clown suits.....
- Wanda from Erfworld had been playing a Xanatos Gambit before the events of the main storyline took place, ever since she learned she was destined to attune to an Arkentool. After attuning to the Arkenpliers, she lays out to Parson the steps she took to make it all possible here. However, Wanda actually downplays the cleverness of her gambit by claiming to only be an instrument of Fate.
- Charles, head of Charlescomm (one of the sides in Erfworld) is quite fond of the Xanatos Gambit, as seen in this strip◊.
- All of Bob And George was a Xanatos Gambit by two authors, and the titular characters mum who went from a big black monsters blob shadow to a hot shonen mom sprite thing.
- Weirdly enough, Sergeant Schlock pulls off a minor one of these while investigating a mysterious human-cannonball-related death at a circus in this strip. Jud Shafter is a minor character notable for being scared shitless by Schlock quite some time ago. Oh, and that's not casual profanity. That's precision.
- The basis of this Penny Arcade strip.
- As one of the page quotes shows, this is Black Mage's final point to explain why Doctor Doom beats Batman in this Eight Bit Theatre strip.
Web Original
- This editor is extremely fond of doing this in Death Note rounds on Mitadake High - at one point playing both ends against the middle by being his own Xanatos Sucker in a game where the players had effectively become 'Kira and his supporters' and 'everyone else'. When the players began taking revenge for one of their own taking the fall of the Xanatos Gambit, they effectively wiped each other out, reslting in the instigator coming out on top. Oh, and if at any point he decided that it might be a little obvious if he became the Xanatos Sucker he simply let the plan go through, furthering his own scheme anyway. He only ever actually killed two people with the Death Note - someone who was a little too intelligent and would have ruined everything, and his Shinigami Eyes, who was the first name in the book, destined to die an hour before the game ended. He spent the moments leading up to the Eyes' death by explaining to them exactly what he did.
- Subverted in The Daily Victim when an employee of an obscure gaming mag plots to get his people into a con. When they get there, he asks the guy at the door to give them their passes. Which he does. The narrator, expecting a refusal, has already set his non-defined, incomprehensible plan into motion. The installment finishes with him desperately trying to stop his associates before they start their part of the scheme. There was another character in the same series who always has a backup plan. Heck, Fargo seems very fond of the Gambit.
- In Ayla 5, the principle is lampshaded. In the middle of a Thirty Xanatos Pile-up, the main star gets a smirk. "Xanatos Gambit?" "Xanatos Gambit." And it's just as planned.
- Parodied by Adam in episode 9 of Maddison Atkins.
Western Animation
Professional Wrestling
- Randy Orton's revenge scheme against Triple H incorporated this trope. Several losses he and his minions suffered at the hands of The Game in the course of their feud were purportedly to heighten his false sense of control and leave him vulnerable to far more devastating reprisals (in particular a degrading attack on his wife).
Close Professional Wrestling
Board Games
- A game of Chess played by two halfway decent people is truly a joy to behold due to the sheer number of Xanatos gambits. Indeed, the very principle of the Gambit comes from the Chess practice of offering up the sacrifice of a piece in order to gain a positional advantage. It is exceedingly common to sacrifice one's own piece in order to capture an opponent's piece, or simply to break the opponent's defences. Capturing the offered piece is called "Gambit accepted", and refusing is called "Gambit declined". Since many players have multiple such gambits going on at any one time, a game can quickly become a Thirty Xanatos Pileup.
- Connect 4 is generally won through a Xanatos gambit: by setting up two sequences right next to each other, either the other player blocks your first one and allows the second, or ignores both and so allows the first.
- While not always a board game (in fact, it's usually drawn with paper and pencil), a so-called "double-trap" in Tic-tac-toe is one of the most obvious Xanatos gambits.
Music
- In it's original form, and shorn of its set pieces, The Nutcracker is just a Xanatos Gambit on the part of Herr Drosselmeyer, where he frees his nephew, the Prince, with the unwitting aid of his goddaughter Clara.
Real Life
- Chief Justice John Marshall pulled one on President Jefferson with the historical Marbury vs. Madison case by claimimg the power of judicial review and subsequently using it to give Jefferson exactly what he wanted. This left Jefferson in the position of either to accept Marshall's power grab or hand Marbury the job that he was so intent on witholding in the first place.
- "Marbury vs. Madison: A politician covering his ass, or the most masterful usurpation of power in the history of America?"
- The creators of lonelygirl15 tried to pass it off as a real girl's videoblog; when they were caught, it was a firestorm of free publicity.
- This could equally apply to every effort any individual or organization makes to discourage people from watching a movie, reading a book or playing a game; the controversy resulting thereof causes a huge spike in sales (which is, of course, just fine by the creator(s) of said movie/book/game).
- Worked like a particularly obvious charm for promoting Grand Theft Auto. The UK publicists told the tabloid The Daily Mail which whipped itself up into a frenzy quicker than you can say "BAN THIS SICK FILTH!" Result: publicity you couldn't buy.
- Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of Prussia and later Germany, accomplished this bit of self-promotion through a long succession of dastardly traps which fit the trope perfectly, in particular having a talent for tricking people into declaring war against him for purposes of his own. So central was the trick to his strategy that he once tampered with his own king's personal messages to ensure one came off right. A man of skill and duplicity, but if he planned everything, he'd be something of a real life Xanatos Roulette. Then again, a man wearing that formidable a hat is clearly working at a higher level than most. When he was kicked out by the then-Emperor Willhelm II, things fell apart real bad.
- Ironically, some authors have suggested that even the old Iron Chancellor himself was having problems juggling his own gambits at the time of his dismissal, and for the most part none of his successors were up to the job either.
- Russian Commanders-in-Chief (Barclay de Tolly and Kutuzov) during Napoleon's Russian Campaign of 1812. Both would give up Moscow without any significant battle if not for public and Emperor's opinion; Napoleon trying to prevent Russian armies from joining (and later from preparing a good defense position) had to go ahead faster than his supply lines allowed. This cost him half of the army; captured Moscow also wasn't up to expectation because it was burnt down by retreating Russians.
- Ah...I see you have reached the end of the page... excellent
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