Paranoia Gambits in Fan Works.
Crossovers
- Harry Potter and the Natural 20: Milo is recovering from an acromantula bite, so Snape gives him the antidote in an Obviously Evil flask — and uses Legilimency on him so that he knows Milo's plan to figure out whether the potion is safe and can immediately make up a reason why it wouldn't work. All of this is for nothing more than Snape's amusement at seeing Milo squirm.
- This tends to be one of Discord's go-tos in The MLP Loops with certain variants of Celestia: upon his escape, she'll put the whole palace under lockdown, rally the guard, and cause all manner of chaos on her own, without his slightest intervention. In one of his earliest loops, he even took the time to make the entire legal structure more efficient, thus throwing both Celestia and Luna into a tizzy as they tried to decipher his plans.
- The "Curse of Calamity", as described in Not the intended use (Zantetsuken Reverse), is the oldest and most powerful hex known to man, which will bring the victim many misfortunes for the rest of their life. Or, more precisely, it does nothing, but the paranoia that comes with defying a witch convinces the victim that anything bad that ever happens to them must have been because of the curse.
- Danganronpa Reimagined: The Return to Hope's Peak Academy:
- The mastermind sets up Yasuke's death by having his secret reveal that "Junko" isn't who they think they are.
- They do this again in Chapter 4; instead of revealing the traitor's identity, they simply tell the surviving students that there's a traitor amongst them, turning them against each other.
- Harry and Ginny in The Meaning of One recruit Mr. Weasley to help them get one over on the Twins. He sends the Twins a Howler on March 31st to wish them a happy birthday, explaining that he and Mrs. Weasley came across their birth certificates and realised that they were actually born slightly before midnight, not on April 1 as they'd always thought. The Twins are aghast at the revelation that they weren't really born on April Fool's Day, and mope through the whole day without the heart to pull a single prank, as it would "be like we're pranking ourselves as much as anyone else." The evening of April 1, though, they get a second Howler to tell them that they really were born shortly after midnight.Arthur: You've just gone all day on April Fools' without causing any trouble. Congratulations! You've been had!
- In Oh God, Not Again!, Sirius mentions his plans to do this. "It's going to take every ounce of my considerable self-control, but I want to wait until [Snape's] so paranoid he can't sleep before I start in on him."
- Harriett Potter pulls this on the Weasley Twins very effectively in The Rigel Black Chronicles; they know that she'll want revenge for their Valentine's Day prank, and she has caught them before with an elaborate combination of enchanted glitter and Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans, so naturally they're deeply suspicious of her gift of fudge and candy, and spend ages in their dorm room testing it exhaustively. It's clean, though; her revenge comes later in a different form.
- In Three to Backstep
, the titular three, who have a private apartment within Hogwarts, discover Dumbledore's been putting listening charms in their private quarters so he can eavesdrop. Two of the solutions involve an Ear Worm (specifically, "I'm Henry the Eighth I Am"), and this trope, in the form of altering what's heard to discussion of plotting the murders of staff members. Dumbledore and Snape quickly exceed Fake!Moody in thoroughness checking their food and drink at meals, among other things. - Trolling the Toad: Harry and Luna plot this in Chapter 23 while returning to Hogwarts after the Christmas holidays, to keep Umbridge on her toes and so that he can plot a proper comeback prank for later. In Luna's words, they're "pranking her by not pranking her".
- The Karma of Lies: Ladybug uses this against Lila. Knowing that she's highly unlikely to listen to her advice that she should change her ways, something both freely admit during their final chat, she simply states matter-of-factly that if she continues down this path, she's inevitably going to wind up dying in a cell at the hands of one of her victims. She also drops hints that she may have used the Rabbit Miraculous to actually see what fate befalls her, something that only dawns upon Lila right after Ladybug leaves. And she went into an unnerving amount of detail...
- This gets deconstructed in the Recursive Fanfiction Karma Overbalance. Lila convinces herself that Marinette is going to do something to her, and returns to Paris to seek some way of Blackmailing the superheroine. Adrien, broken by the Humiliation Conga he'd suffered throughout The Karma of Lies, murders Lila in order to get arrested.
- Deconstructed from a different direction in Karmic Backlash: Lila not only does not stops scheming but, at least partially out of rage at having some control taken away from her and partially to Screw Destiny, returns to Paris one year later to ruin Marinette. Lila succeeds but, in a bit of irony, Marinette's prediction do comes to happen (broadly) when Lila bullies another girl with her standard M.O. and the girl snaps and stabs her to death in response. Everybody else in the cast chews out Marinette (and much more) for the stupidity of her decision to let Lila go away with a slap on the wrist with all of the crimes she committed while she made sure that Adrien paid through the nose for his comparatively lesser sins.
- In The Haunting of Lila Rossi, the Kwami decide to haunt Lila in revenge for everything she's put Marinette through, counting on her to become paranoid to be committed and sent away from their Guardian.
- Yesterday Upon The Stair: During the USJ attack, Izuku stalls Shiragaki by pointing out that while the villain claims that he knows he can kill All Might, he also "knew" All Might was going to be there... and yet he isn't. Izuku then prompts him to wonder what else he doesn't know.
- One of Naruto's more ingenious traps in A Drop of Poison is a step that makes a slight click sound when stepped on. It does nothing but anyone who hears it reflexively jumps away from it, right into an actual trap.
- Little Uzumaki: After being deaged and taken in by the Hyuuga, Sasuke decides to get revenge for how Neji brutalized Hinata during the Chuunin Exams by running one of these. He repeated visits Neji's room while the other is sleeping, staring at him, in order to make Neji increasingly paranoid. His long-term plan was to eventually break off his visits, giving Neji just long enough to be lulled into a false sense of security before killing him in his sleep. However, Itachi intervenes, and the Hyuuga become convinced that Sasuke's possessed.
- In This Bites!, after Robin joins the crew, despite Cross' friendliness towards her, she remembers that after their first meeting, he promised that they'd meet again, and he'd pay her back. Cross informs her that he doesn't plan on getting her back anytime soon, because he needs to think a long time about what to do. And meanwhile... she can worry about it. Eventually he gets back at Robin by giving her a noogie live on the SBS.
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
- In Cat-Ra, Adora's scheme at the Princess Prom puts even Catra's from canon to shame, a Paranoia Gambit involving a snow globe that to Catra's advanced hearing seems to be a bomb, letting her quick temper do all the work in making her look like the villain to Frosta.
- In Darth Vader: Hero of Naboo, the Sith in general operate against each other by making them overly paranoid about what other Sith are up to. Vader and Plagueis in particular weaponize Sidious's paranoia against him, Vader by simply being a complete unknown and Plagueis by using his status as a Master of Illusion to make Sidious question whether their entire battle had even happened. The former causes Sidious to betray Plagueis prematurely, while the latter makes it easier for Plagueis to kill his treasonous apprentice.
- In Total Drama Legacy: How Drew gets Serena eliminated in "The Word on the Street". After winning invincibility in the challenge (ensuring no one can vote for him), he beats up Serena and says that it's only a taste of what he's going to do to her the next day, which he says will result in her having to be medically evacuated. He then says that the only way for her to avoid this fate is if she was voted off, which convinces Serena's friends to all vote her off and Serena to vote for herself out of concern for her own safety.
- In A Prank Too Many, Sideswipe spends a week playing various pranks on Tracks. Tracks retaliates with two words "My turn" and this trope.
