As this is a Death Trope, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware.
Uriah Gambits in Literature.
- Alexis Carew: Mutineer: The brutal and horribly sexist Captain Neals puts Alexis in command of one of HMS Hermione's "boats" (a non-FTL-capable shuttle) while investigating a system where they've been told there are Hanoverese merchantmen to raid. There's no merchantmen, but there is a Hanoverese revenue cutter which is no match for Hermione but more than a match for Alexis' boat. Neals deliberately leaves Alexis behind, clearly intending that she be killed or captured. Alexis instead pulls a Wounded Gazelle Gambit on the cutter, captures it, and flies it home, and the Prize Court gives her full credit for the capture due to Neals' absence.
- Alex Rider: In Scorpia Rising, the ninth book of the series, Zeljan Kurst uses this as part of a larger Xanatos Gambit. He knows in advance that Levi Kroll will attempt to attack him after repeatedly being passed over for leadership positions, so he has him assassinated and plants false evidence on his body in order to force MI6's hand.
- The short story All's Fair in Love and War by Jeffrey Archer has a twist. Dirty Coward Ralph Dudley Dawson recommends his wife's lover Jamie Corrigan for a dangerous mission rather than sending him himself. Corrigan, on his return, dives into a trench, escapes the enemy fire and gets a Military Medal for his trouble, while Dawson gets a bullet in his forehead as he looks out to see where Corrigan is. Bonus point: since Dawson dies intestate, his wife inherits all his fortune and is free to marry Corrigan.
- In Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, General John MacArthur had used a similar method to dispose of his wife Leslie's lover Arthur Richmond (who also was his Number Two) during World War I. Afterward, he avoided attending church whenever the David and Bathsheba story was scheduled to be read, and Leslie later succumbed to Death by Despair. Otherwise, it went so well that even Scotland Yard detectives, told afterwards that murder is involved, cannot be sure that it really is. Too bad a certain Hanging Judge and Magnificent Bastard got notice of it and decided to murder him, alongside other Karma Houdinis.
- Animorphs: After putting up with the Inspector threatening to put him out of job all week, Visser Three goads him into fighting the "Andalite bandits" by himself, knowing they've developed a plan on how to counter his Garatron host's Super-Speed by now. The Inspector knows Visser Three is pulling this off, but is too much of a Smug Super to believe he can be defeated. He runs rings around Ax and gets bitten by Marco in cobra morph, and Visser Three watches smugly as he convulses and dies in under a minute.
- In Avalon High, Will's father pulls this off on one of his underlings because he is in love with his wife and wishes to begin Comforting the Widow. It works so perfectly that people suspect as much and it is an open secret in the town. It is also part of the motivation of the book's antagonist, Marco, since it was his father who died.
- In Volume 10 of The Beginning After the End, upon hearing from Windsom that Aldir has left his service and is planning to depart from Epheotus, Kezess orders him to lead a group of soldiers to apprehend Aldir before he leaves. Said soldiers are hand-picked specifically because Aldir himself had trained them. Naturally, considering how he is one of the most powerful warriors on Epheotus and had been one of his top generals, Aldir is able to slaughter them all excluding Windsom. However, it turns out that even though they failed in apprehending him, the outcome still favors Kezess. In forcing Aldir to slaughter the very soldiers he trained in self-defense, he manages to discredit Aldir in the eyes of the other Asuras by painting him as a madman and a traitor. At the same time, he manages to break Aldir psychologically as the guilt over killing his own trainees pushes him (who was already having a My God, What Have I Done? moment after Kezess ordered him to destroy Elenoir) into the Despair Event Horizon, as by the time Arthur meets with him at the end of the volume Aldir is no longer willing to fight and so sacrifices himself to resurrect Sylvie. By sending a bunch of soldiers after their own mentor knowing they would die and thus breaking their mentor's will, Kezess comes off as a Bad Boss and Manipulative Bastard who in spite of his rhetoric about upholding the greater good is not afraid to vindictively Kick the Dog while he is at it.
- The Belgariad has a rare heroic version: the Bear-Cult is xenophobic, reactionary, and outright seditious, but Queen Islena can't imprison its leader Grodeg because he's also the High Priest of their god. Instead, she calls the bluff on the Cult's militaristic posturing and sends all its leadership to lead the defense against an invading army, which decimates their numbers and results in Grodeg's death.
- Belisarius Series:
- When the good guys have the Malwa on the ropes and are beating them back, the Persian emperor is quite happy to have his most troublesome and less loyal nobles, lead the charge into battle even though their method of warfare is now obsolete. As he openly gloats, if they win, his own reputation as the leader of a victorious army gets enhanced while they will no doubt suffer many casualties. If they lose, a whole bunch of potential problems have just eliminated themselves in something that won't really affect the larger war.
- In the later bits of the series, the Persian emperor cheerfully allows troublesome and arrogant members of the Persian nobility to partake in cavalry charges against dug-in enemy troops armed with rifles.
- Beren and Lúthien, Thingol orders Beren to bring him one of the Silmarils, enchanted jewels currently residing in the Big Bad's crown. Ostensibly this is as a bride-price to allow Beren to marry Thingol's daughter Luthien, but in reality it's a method of executing Beren without technically breaking his promise to Luthien that if she revealed the name of her lover, Thingol wouldn't kill or imprison him.
- In The Bone Doll's Twin, the king sends Lord Rhius on suicidally dangerous missions, to dispense with his influence over his son, second in line for the throne.
- The Boy on the Bridge features a delayed example. Initially, Brigadier Fry sending Colonel Carlisle (a Commander Contrarian to her General Ripper strategies) out to escort the mission to study zombies in the field was more of Carlisle being Reassigned to Antarctica (although she wouldn't have been that upset if he died). But when Fry start a mini-civil war at the Citadel City while trying to increase her power, she becomes paranoid about Carlisle being able to turn the balance against her if he comes back alive and starts giving orders meant to ensure that he won't.
- The Childe Cycle novella "Brothers" recounts an incident in which a commandant sent an entire contingent of Dorsai (Badass Army mercenaries) into a certain-death situation, hoping to damage the enemy and avoid having to pay the Dorsai afterward. "One-fourth of Rochmont's fighting strength — one battalion of Dorsai — were sent by Rochmont forth alone, to bleed Helmuth, and die." It didn't turn out well for Helmuth, and even less so for Rochmont. "No more is there a Rochmont town, no more are Rochmont's men. But stands a Dorsai monument to Colonel Jacques Chrétien."
- Chillin' in Another World with Level 2 Cheat Powers: King Klyrode sends Flio to die in a forest he knew was occupied by demon forces and gave him a bag enchanted to attract monsters and stored only with flimsy weapons.
- Felix Cortez plans to do this in Clear and Present Danger, sending Cartel fighters against the American soldiers while building his own loyal group of fighters to take over the Cartel. The plan gets interrupted in the story by other events.
- In the Codex Alera series by Jim Butcher done a couple times.
- First by Lord Aquitaine with the Crown-loyal soldiers by having his forces either move too early or too late and his temporary ally's men suffer the worst for it.
- Then Gaius Sextus does this to Lord Rhodes, in revenge for his part in murdering Septimus, Gaius' son.
- In Curse of the Wolfgirl The Avenaris Guild of Werewolf hunters have an accountant who just cost them their cushy expenses account. Said accountant is transferred to frontline werewolf hunting activity forthwith. Subverted as it turns out this was the accountant's plan all along as part of his Batman Gambit.
- A Desolation Called Peace: When Nine Hibiscus is promoted to yaotlek (roughly a fleet admiral) to lead a new war, some Ministry staff believe that she's being sent off to die gloriously because the new Emperor sees her outstanding military record as a threat. Subverted when the Emperor admits that she hopes Nine Hibiscus is dangerous enough to survive the appointment.
- Mentioned by name in the Dr. Thorndyke story The Shadow of the Wolf, in which Thorndyke at one point theorises it was the motivation for a murder. In fact (as the reader already knows) it was not the primary motivation, just an added bonus from the point of view of the murderer who happened to desire his victim's (unhappy) wife.
- Egil's Saga: For two years in succession, the tax-collectors of King Hakon have been ambushed and killed on the forest-road returning from the outlying province of Varmland. The third year, Hakon forces Egil's friend Thorstein to choose between collecting the taxes from Varmland or being outlawed. Egil offers to go in Thorstein's place, and since the king's messengers know Hakon is ill-disposed towards Egil too, they accept, calculating that any possible outcome will please Hakon. The journey is undertaken in winter, the king's men desert Egil and his companions, and the Varmlanders ambush them with superior numbers twice; yet Egil succeeds in the mission.
- In Ender's Game, Rose De Nose, the commander of Rat Army, tells his new recruit Ender that he can't use his holodesk until he freezes two soldiers in the same battle. Ender ignores him and uses it anyway, so Rose tries to humiliate him in battle by ordering him to be the first to enter the Battle Room, meaning he'll be completely alone against the enemy army. However, Ender turns it into a feat of glory by attacking Centipede Army while they're still entering the Battle Room, causing him to rack up an incredible kill count in a matter of seconds before he's frozen. After that, Rose leaves him alone.
- The Father Brown mystery "The Sign of the Broken Sword" by G. K. Chesterton. An interesting twist on both tropes: The murderer, General St. Claire, killed his victim first, and then planned otherwise pointless assault so that it would happen at exactly the same spot, thus hiding his victim among other casualties.
- In the novel Fatherland the Gestapo chief Globus sends the cadet Jost to the Eastern front, after Jost witnessed Globus dumping the corpse of a former high-ranking Nazi official into a lake.
- In Flashman and the Mountain of Light, the Sikh ruling class deliberately starts a war with the British empire so that their unruly and regicidal army will be slaughtered.
- Flashman himself does this in Flashman and the Dragon to a subordinate who knows too much, although indirectly by tricking him into volunteering.
- Fridthjof's Saga: Because Fridthjof has refused to join the royal levy and visited princess Ingibjorg against the prohibition of her brothers, the kings Helgi and Halfdan, the kings demand that Fridthjof makes amends for his offences by sailing to Orkney to collect the kings' tribute. Fridthjof accepts the condition, but as soon as he has departed, the kings hire two witches to summon a sea storm with the intent to drown Fridthjof, and which Fridthjof survives only narrowly.
- The whole plot of Going Postal. Moist von Lipwig, who was sentenced to death for fraud, is instead tasked with reviving the Post Office. The last four Postmasters have all died on the job. If he succeeds, great! If he dies too, well, that's just his sentence being carried out. (Granted, Vetinari would prefer if Moist survived, and might be amenable to reasonable requests for assistance toward this, but he has so little information on how and why Postmasters have been dying he has no better strategy available.)
- Gotrek & Felix: Skavenslayer features a variation. Each major story beat focuses on one of the Skaven subfactions trying a mission to undermine Nuln that wouldn't inherently be that dangerous, except that the overall leader, Grey Seer Thanquol, invariably gets paranoid about them taking the credit for a victory, and sends the heroes a note telling them where to find the evil plan in question, which - considering that Felix is a gifted swordsman and Gotrek is a Death Seeker who's too hardcore to actually die - tends to increase the risk of death for the subfaction leader and everyone standing near him significantly. To about 100%, in most cases. It is entirely typical for the Skaven that Thanquol's devotion to this trope ends up significantly undermining his campaign and costing the lives of a tremendous number of his own forces.
- Harry Potter:
- Heimskringla: On the plea of Finn Arneson, King Harald Sigurdsson allows Finn's brother Kalf to return from exile on the condition that Kalf must swear allegiance and join Harald's war expeditions. Kalf had helped bring Harald's brother Magnus to the throne, but was later exiled by Magnus because he was suspected to have delivered the lethal wound to Magnus' father Olaf (Harald's elder brother) in the Battle of Stiklestad. When Kalf accordingly sails with Harald to raid the Danish island of Fyn, Harald orders Kalf to go on land with an advance party, promising to later join him with the main army. Soon, Kalf and his troop are overwhelmed by a Danish army, and Kalf is killed. Finn Arneson is convinced that Harald wanted to get Kalf killed on purpose, and leaves Norway to join Harald's rival King Svein of Denmark.
- Downplayed in Honor Harrington: Honor Among Enemies. Several of Honor's political enemies, including Klaus Hauptmann, arrange for her to be given command of a flotilla of Q-ships to hunt pirates in the Silesian Confederacy. They reason that either she succeeds and improves their bottom line, or the pirates kill her. Either way, they win.
- In the Hornblower book A Ship of the Line, Admiral Leighton, husband to Lady Barbara whom Hornblower is in love with, orders him to attack four French ships at once. Hornblower at the time mentally calls this moral courage as he sees it as his duty and was going to do it anyway. In the following book a couple of lines hint that Leighton had covered up giving this signal, implying he had much more sinister motives for giving it.
- The Hunger Games:
- In The Initiate Brother, Emperor Akantsu deems Lord Shonto a threat to his throne, and assigns him to a border province while secretly encouraging barbarians to invade it. The hope is that even if Shonto survives, his inevitable defeat will permanently discredit him. The Emperor later throws his treacherous ex-lieutenant and his "useless" son into the same trap, just for good measure. The problem is, the barbarians arrive in much greater force than the Emperor expects (perhaps having noted well that the empire is not too big on the whole "unity" concept). They nearly conquer the empire.
- In Island in the Sea of Time, Walker encourages the moronic Pamela Lisketter and her followers in their supremely idiotic plan to steal a ship and travel to Mexico to educate the pre-Columbian civilizations, and even suggests that they kidnap Martha Cofflin and keep her as a hostage, because he knows that they'll all probably get killed and their ill-conceived venture will serve as a distraction to keep Marian Alston and the rest of the Coast Guard off of his ass while he sets up shop across the Atlantic.
- Julian Comstock. President Deklan Comstock tries to arrange this for his nephew Julian whom he fears will become a rival for power, putting him in charge of a campaign in Labrador and then withdrawing naval support so he'll be killed or taken prisoner. Unfortunately the gambit is so obvious to the military (who are already fed up with the President) that they depose him and make Julian the President instead (to Julian's horror).
- The Lee Goldberg novel King City has the borderline corrupt police chief send Sergeant Wade, who embarrassed him by helping with a Federal investigation, to reopen a precinct in the city's worst neighborhood, Darwin Gardens. For context, Darwin Gardens is so overrun with gangs that it's been erased from the city maps, the last police officers who actually ventured inside (by accident while chasing a car thief) were immediately gunned down, and the Chief only gives Wade two rookies to help with the precinct and forbids sending him any backup, even to investigate murders. Wade spends the novel working hard to try and turn this into a Reassignment Backfire.
- At the end of the first book of The Lightbringer Series, the Color Prince successfully pulls one of these on his alleged master, King Garadul. The Color Prince convinces Garadul (already hot-headed and erratic) to fight on the front lines, allegedly to inspire their soldiers but in fully knowledge that there are numerous combatants on the other side capable of killing Garadul and willing to go out of their way to do it. Sure enough, Garadul dies, the Color Prince gets to promote himself from Dragon-in-Chief to full Big Bad, and he gets to cement his followers loyalty by using Garadul as a martyr.
- In The Machineries of Empire, the Kel Command agrees to send Jedao to recapture the Fortress of Scattered Needles partly in hopes that he'd either get killed off for good or give them a reason to disregard Can't Kill You, Still Need You.
- In The Man with the Golden Gun, this is actually why Bond is sent against "Pistols" Scaramanga in the first place. After being brainwashed by the Soviets and nearly killing M, the head of MI6 decides to send him against the world's most dangerous gunslinger alone. Either he succeeds, or he dies and suffers a just punishment for treason.
- Zack, the Anti-Hero of The Mental State, does this to the rapists living in the same prison as him. He recruits them to tunnel under a metal fence connecting the men's prison to the women's prison, claiming that he wants to let them have their way with the female inmates. This turns out to be a ruse and he really wanted to create a means whereby the two genders could interact more freely and even share some alone time together. He tipped off the women in advance, who were lying in wait for the rapists when they pulled themselves out of the hole on the other side, leaving them exhausted, trapped and completely at the mercy of some very angry female offenders.
- Discussed in Paladin of Shadows: Unto the Breach, between Mike and Anastasia, in regards to Kiril, fiance of Gretchen, but ultimately rejected as a solution to both Mike and Kiril being madly in love with Gretchen, the latter of which was formally arranged to marry her by Keldara custom.
- The Riftwar Cycle: Daughter of the Empire opens with Mara of the Acoma learning that the Lord of the Minwanabi has successfully executed a gambit that resulted in the death of her father, her brother, and most of her family's troops, when the Minwanabi intentionally didn't come to their aid on the battlefield quickly enough. This leaves Mara as Ruling Lady of her now critically weakened house. She spends the next two books rebuilding her house from the losses suffered from the gambit and getting revenge.
- The Robotech novelization says that War Correspondent Sue Graham was attached to the Jupiter Fleet trying to free the Earth from the Invid by Lisa Hayes-Hunter because she was trying to get too friendly with Rick. Lisa wasn't specifically trying to get Sue killed (though she did that on her own), she just wanted her several thousand light-years away from her husband.
- Ironically, this happened to the Hunters themselves in The Sentinels, when T.R. Edwards managed to get them both (and their supporters like Max and Miyria) sent off with the Sentinels.
- Saintess Summons Skeletons: By the time Sofia reaches level 49, the Magisterium escorting her is getting tired, but Sofia wheedles him into continuing, claiming that she wants to reach level 50 and never have to come face all the Sinner Zombies again. She then arranges for him to be distracted, surrounded, and overpowered by the zombies, so that she can escape without him using his Skills to teleport her back.
- In the Shadowrun novel Lone Wolf, the undercover cop protagonist mouths off to the war chief of the street gang he's infiltrated, and nearly falls prey to this trope the next time he's sent on an errand for the gang. He lampshades the analogy between his predicament and Uriah's.
- In The Shahnameh, Gushtasp, trying to renege on his promise to hand the throne over to his son Esfandiyār, sends him to bring Rostam to the Shah in chains. Luckily though, the curse that will torment the killer of Esfandiyār can see through this.
- Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold:
- The (failed) invasion of Escobar is a massive Uriah Gambit on the part of Emperor Ezar to dispose of his Sketchy Successor Crown Prince Serg and Serg's worst enablers, and weaken the faction supporting him. Cordelia, putting the pieces of the plan together, describes it as "put all the bad eggs in one basket... and then drop the basket."
- Earlier in the book, somebody else tried to kill Aral Vorkosigan this way, twice. It didn't work, mostly thanks to Aral's genius for ending up in a Reassignment Backfire.
- In The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Crooked Man", the victim (named James) was overheard arguing with his wife, and she was heard to say the name David. It turned out that she was alluding to the Trope Namer. The eponymous Crooked Man (named Henry) was the victim of her husband's Uriah Gambit some thirty years earlier, and she had found him in the homeless shelter where she volunteered.
- Since kinslaying is a huge taboo in A Song of Ice and Fire, people occasionally have to get creative when it comes to getting rid of unwanted family members. In one battle, Tywin Lannister sends his son Tyrion to lead the least experienced part of his forces that he wants the enemy to overwhelm to lure them into a trap. Without informing Tyrion of the plan. It turns out the enemy doesn't fall for the trap, and the Mountain Clansmen Tyrion is leading into battle are so badass they throw back their attackers instead of breaking themselves. It would probably have worked anyway, but the army they're facing turns out be a diversionary force much smaller than what they expected to meet.
- Cersei deals with her political rivals the Tyrells by sending them to besiege Dragonstone, knowing full well that Loras Tyrell will rashly lead a full-scale attack, making this is a simultaneous Batman, Uriah and Xanatos Gambit. It doesn't quite work, Loras successfully takes the castle and is (supposedly) badly injured in the attack. While that pleases Cersei, since Loras was the leader it's treated as a Tyrell victory, making them more powerful.
- At the end of the third book, Janos Slynt sends Jon Snow out to treat with Mance among the wildlings, with the secret mission to assassinate him. If he does this, the wildlings would immediately slaughter him. And as Jon's recent Fake Defector gambit had already put his loyalty into question, Janos could have him executed for being a traitor if he returned without slaying Mance. In a rare instance of a Deus ex Machina being used in the series, Stannis's army arrives at the last possible moment and deals with the wildling threat instead.
- One of Slynt's cronies, Ser Allister Thorne accuse Jon, after the latter is named Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, of pulling one of these when Jon orders him to lead a ranging beyond the Wall, given that territory is now overrun by wildlings, undead and worse. Thorne grudgingly takes the mission as he knows Jon would like nothing more than an excuse to execute Thorne for insubordination, the same way he did to Slynt.
- Roose Bolton does this with a skill verging on Magnificent Bastard status. From the moment he realises that Robb Stark can't win the war, Roose starts whittling down the forces under his command by placing them in situations where they'll be cut off and destroyed by Lannister forces. By the time of the Red Wedding, only his own men and the Karstarks (who have their own grudge against Robb) are left. In ADWD, faced with the Freys and Manderlys at each other's throats and potentially plotting treason, he sends then out into the snow to fight the forces of King Stannis, while keeping his own men safe in Winterfell. This one could backfire though, as it puts them in prime position to betray him and ally with his enemies. Particularly the Manderlys, who are planning to do so anyway.
- In a rare 'good guy' example, Daenerys Targaryen sends Jorah Mormont and Barristan Selmy on a Suicide Mission as a punishment for their betrayals/lies; but when they survive, she accepts that the gods have a different fate in mind for them.
- In The Sworn Sword, Lady Rohanne Webber has Ser Duncan fight the Longinch in a Combat by Champion. The Longinch is an unwelcome suitor who is scaring off anyone else who shows an interest in her. Ser Duncan is proving stubborn by refusing to stand aside and let her invade Ser Eustace Osgrey's lands. She gets them to fight each other, then marries Ser Eustace, getting his lands anyway. Having taken a shine to Rohanne himself, Ser Duncan is rather miffed.
- Fire & Blood: Unwin Peake, slimy git that he is, sends Alyn Velaryon to go deal with Dalton Greyjoy with the full expectation he'll die. Much to everyone's surprise, Greyjoy's killed by one of his salt-wives (concubines) while Alyn's en route, and his exploits on that journey only make him more popular, and Alyn would outlast Peake.
- Duke Roger tries this on Prince Jon in Song of the Lioness, as Jon's birth inconveniently took away Roger's place in the line of succession. After a plague and goading him into exploring the Black City failed, Roger got himself a generalship in the Tusaine War and ordered Jon into an extremely exposed position. (This also failed.)
- The Trope Namer is referenced in the Starbuck novel "Battle Flag" by Bernard Cornwell, as Colonel Swynyard is ordered to send Starbuck and his company out as skirmishers close to enemy troops, expecting the rest of the battalion to follow them. They never do, leaving them on their own and facing overwhelming opposition. Starbuck survives and Swynyard is perhaps fortunate that he has a Faith–Heel Turn in the meantime and apologises to him. The general that gave Swynyard his orders isn't so easily forgiven.
- Star Trek Expanded Universe:
- Done in the Mirror Universe novel Dark Mirror to Jack Crusher's mirror counterpart by Picard's to take possession of Beverly. The main universe's Picard is horrified to learn this.
- Also popped up in Q-Squared, where Trelane convinced an alternate version of Jack Crusher who didn't die that in every other universe Jean-Luc and Beverly ended up together at some point after his death. This universe spared Jack Crusher at the cost of his son Wesley, which drove Beverly away and eventually into the arms of Picard, who was Crusher's first officer after being broken in rank. Trelane even mentions Uriah and David, which pushes Crusher over edge into murderous jealousy.
- Star Wars Legends:
- Outbound Flight: Eighteen Jedi, six of them Masters, heading off on a dangerous mission into the Unknown Regions... why, anything could happen out there. Palpatine even secretly sent a fleet after them to be sure they were wiped out. The fifty thousand civilians with them? Too bad. (And most of those civilians were exactly the kind of people who'd chafe under the Empire anyway: once found again, many still respect Palpatine for his avowed commitment to preserving the independence of the Old Republic's member worlds.)
- The Han Solo Trilogy: A political variant occurs in The Hutt Gambit. Moff Sarn Shild decides to glass Nar Shaddaa to break the back of the Hutt cartels; however, the admiral in charge, Winstel Greelanx, secretly receives orders from Coruscant to lose the battle on purpose (basically, to retreat once he takes a reasonable number of casualties). This is surmised after the fact to be a plot to embarrass Shild and give the Emperor an excuse to remove him, since he'd become politically problematic; Shild is recalled to Coruscant and commits suicide rather than face the Emperor. Greelanx himself doesn't fare much better: he's killed by Darth Vader, though it's ambiguous whether the Dark Lord was eliminating a potential leak or if he had found out Greelanx had simultaneously taken a bribe from the Hutts to do the same thing.
- In Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina, it was revealed that Greedo was set up to face Han Solo alone because Goa knew Greedo wasn't up to it, and had been hired to get rid of him by a tyrant who had condemned Greedo's entire clan to extermination. (Goa didn't have the heart to pull the trigger himself.)
- Dark Force Rising, the middle book of The Thrawn Trilogy, had an interesting variation: Borsk Fey'lya, going out to the site of the Katana Fleet in a ship crewed solely by his most ardent supporters, following right after some political adversaries, ended up ambushed by a superior Imperial force. He got the ship and its escort to turn around and start to flee, leaving Luke, Han, and Rogue Squadron high and dry. However, he got tricked into an Engineered Public Confession in which he stated his belief that those who weren't with him were his enemies, no one cared if their enemies died, and he wouldn't lose his allies, who were of purely political significance, to anything as outmoded as loyalty. His ship and its escort promptly turned back for a Big Damn Heroes moment.
- Star Wars: The Living Force: The Lobber, Ghor, and Wungo evoke so much Enraged by Idiocy sentiment from Zilastra that she keeps sending them on dangerous jobs where they are likely to be killed. When they keep surviving, she eventually gets so fed up that she prematurely arms the explosives she sends them to plant at a bureaucrat’s office in the hope that by the time they find the place, the timer will count down and blow them up. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan figure out what is happening and save the trio, who then help them hijack Zilastra's dropship.
- As the title may hint, the poem "The Story of Uriah,"
by Rudyard Kipling, is a story about this trick being pulled on someone in colonial India. - There's a somewhat bizarre example in Super Minion. The test subject's core includes restrictions that ban the subject from damaging the core. When it escapes its holding cell and provokes a superpowered tiger to attack and destroy a decoy, it also moves the segments of the core which contain the safety code, along with the code to force it to obey commands, into the decoy to be destroyed.
- The very plot of Tale of Fedot the Strelets, a poem by Russian writer Leonid Filatov (basically a retelling of the Fairy Tale example above). When Fedot, a strelets, married a beautiful fairy Marusya, his Tsar wanted the girl for himself. He started giving Fedot impossible tasks so that he could execute him for incompetence. Two of them Marusya managed to accomplish with her magic, but the third one was, literally, "Bring me the-thing-that-cannot-be". Fedot gets away by setting off on a journey, finding the "impossible" AND raising a revolution against Tsar.
- In the J.A. Johnstone western Texas Gundown, Corrupt Corporate Executive Cornelius Standish sends his nephew Seymour (who has a share of the family businesses that he would inherit and whose incompetence is costing him money) to set up a "branch office" for their dried goods business in the wild west. The location of said branch office is a a hotbed of robbery and murder which eats anyone who shows a sign of weakness alive. This turns into a Reassignment Backfire though, first when Seymour gets a ''somewhat'' exaggerated reputation as being such a "lily-livered" coward that none of the self-respecting outlaws of the town will demean themselves by fighting him, and then when the young salesman Took a Level in Badass and becomes the town hero.
- In Strength and Honor, book four of the Tour of the Merrimack series by R. M. Meluch, the emperor of Rome packs his space fleet (yes, you read that right) with political enemies. If they win, good. If they lose, good.
- The War Against the Chtorr.
- In the first novel, the Uncle Ira group give McCarthy (who's been stirring up trouble thus drawing attention to their top secret organisation) a routine assignment to guard a Chtorran worm being displayed for a conference. Unknown to him, the case holding the worm has been deliberately weakened. Unknown to the Uncle Ira group, McCarthy has gone out to the firing range and trained himself to use the flechette rifle he's been issued with. McCarthy stops the worm's rampage becoming a hero in the process, so Uncle Ira decides to make the best of a bad situation and let him join for real.
- After humiliating an annoying but politically-connected officer assigned to him, Captain McCarthy goes on a mission to investigate some Man Eating Plants, only to find he's being denied technical support, his security team has been ordered to withdraw without telling him, and there's a massive duststorm coming up that no-one's warned them about. He's finally extracted by a mysterious benefactor, but loses several members of his team in the process.
- Warhammer 40,000:
- Horus Heresy:
- Fulgrim: When Vespanian complains to Fulgrim that the captains who should have been supporting Captain Demeter didn't, and if it weren't for the intervention of other men, the captain and his men would have died, he realizes that this was exactly Fulgrim's intent. Then Fulgrim kills Vespanian.
- Shortly after the Siege of Terra, Perturabo and the Iron Warriors set a trap for Rogal Dorn and the Imperial Fists. Dorn knows full well it's a trap, but deliberately sends his Legion into it anyway, which he sees as an act of mercy: Roboute Guilliman, who has become de facto regent of the Imperium with the Emperor incapacitated and his presumptive heir Sanguinius dead, has just instated the Codex Astartes, requiring all the Loyalist legions to break up into chapters, and Dorn believes the Fists will rebel before agreeing to that. Thus, he gives his excess Space Marines an honorable death in battle while simultaneously reducing the Fists to chapter strength. (It evidently never occurred to Dorn to simply ignore Guilliman, as Leman Russ and the Wolves of Fenris did.)
- In Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts novels, this often happens to the entire regiment, usually when someone wants to get rid of "Gaunt and his damn Ghosts". (In the worst cases, they resort to Unfriendly Fire.)
- In addition to Unfriendly Fire, this is one of Tigerclaw's tactics in Warrior Cats when he's still a Villain with Good Publicity before his exile:
- Tigerclaw sets his apprentice Ravenpaw (who had witnessed him killing the Clan deputy) dangerous hunting tasks: first at Snakerocks (normally avoided by the cats in summer due to poisonous adders — but Ravenpaw actually killed an adder!), and then in ShadowClan territory.
- He later suspects that Ravenpaw told Fireheart what he had seen. During battle, when Fireheart is fighting for his life and calling for help, Tigerclaw just sits there and watches; fortunately Fireheart manages to fight his way out.
- For another attempt at Fireheart's life, Tigerclaw orders him to try and cross a flooded stream using a spindly branch caught in the water. When Fireheart's right in the middle and Longtail isn't watching, he tries to Make It Look Like an Accident by knocking the branch loose from the rock it's caught on. Longtail saves Fireheart from drowning.
- The Way of Kings (2010): A massive one forms the climax, where Sadeas arranges a joint operation with Dalinar using his own bridges to cross the chasms, and then retreats and leaves Dalinar's army to die. Fortunately Bridge Four is on hand with a secret weapon, and the gambit backfires.
- Unintentionally in David Drake's The Way to Glory. Daniel Leary is asked by his father Corder Leary to kill his CO, Commander Slidell, whom Corder believes just got acquitted of murdering Corder's secret love-child.note Midshipman Oller Kearnes, the son of a woman with whom Corder was having an affair, was accused of plotting mutiny and summarily spaced by Slidell. Daniel has no intention of doing this, but much later, Daniel hatches a plan for a Suicide Mission, intending to command it himself for tactical reasons. However, the paranoid Slidell thinks he's just being a Glory Hound, takes the mission over, and doesn't come back. Daniel still beats himself up over it and later uses his connections to expedite Slidell's share of the subsequent prize payouts to his heirs.
- In The Wheel of Time, Rand al'Thor only brings his enemies on a campaign to fight the Seanchan. Why waste good men?
- Wulfrik: Several happen over the course of the book:
- King Viglundr of the Sarls charges Wulfrik with killing King Torgald of the Aeslings in battle, agreeing to give him his daughter Hjordis in exchange. Wulfrik succeeds, but at the victory feast his drunken boasting causes the Chaos gods to curse him with an immortality spent proving his boasts true, meaning he can't settle down, marry Hjordis and become kingof the Sarls as he wants. This suits Viglundr perfectly: he never intended to marry Hjordis to Wulfrik but to Torgald's son Sveinbjorn (who became king of the Aeslings with Torgald's death). Unfortunately, Wulfrik keeps surviving the horrible monsters and champions the gods send him to kill, meaning his fame and glory grows every time he returns to the Sarls, and Viglundr can't openly send him to die.
- A Kurgan shaman reveals he can lift Wulfrik's curse in exchange for a magical artifact. This turns out to be a ploy on his part to get Wulfrik killed, having prophecied that Wulfrik would be his doom. When even sending Wulfrik to Ulthuan with no way back fails to kill him, the shaman actually an Imperial wizard flees to Wisborg, only for Wulfrik to show up with a Norscan army.
- This was also a Uriah Gambit on Sveinbjorn's part, which Wulfrik quickly turns to his own advantage: Sveinbjorn intended to cut the longships belonging to non-followers adrift on the return trip through the Warp. Wulfrik instead strands them miles deep in Imperial territory (and displays Sveinbjorn's banner as he does it, ensuring any survivors will think it was Sveinbjorn's plan from the start). Then Wulfrik (having murdered Sveinbjorn) gleefully explains to Viglundr that the tribes of the abandoned warriors will demand compensation, the Aeslings will blame Vinglundr for the death of Sveinbjorn, and Viglundr's allies will abandon him on seeing how many people are besieging him, ensuring the complete destruction of everything Viglundr holds dear. Including, unfortunately, Hjordis, which Wulfrik had to sacrifice to Chaos.
