Wounded Gazelle Gambit / Western Animation

Wounded Gazelle Gambits in western animation.

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A-L

• The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius: In "Clash of the Cousins"; Jimmy tries to undo his reputation as the Neutron family's Black Sheep by giving his relatives his inventions as presents on his Great Aunt Amanda's birthday. Unfortunately, said inventions explode, and his infant cousin Eddie cries when this happens. As Jimmy and the viewers find out later on, Eddie is really an evil genius who sabotaged Jimmy's inventions, pretended to cry to make him look bad, and is trying to destroy the Neutron family so that he can inherit Aunt Amanda's fortune. Once Jimmy exposes Eddie's true colors, the Neutron family doesn't fall for any more of Eddie's tricks and brand him as the new black sheep while appreciating Jimmy for saving them.
• Amphibia: This is a classic trick that Tritonio likes to use. In the episode "Combat Camp", when he tricks the Plantars into stealing a diamond from a train, he has Sprig pose as a "crippled orphan boy". Much later in the series, after Andrias takes over Amphibia, Tritonio leads his own La Résistance squad who will often have their youngest member pull the same gambit. His backstory reveals that he was actually an orphan, and in order to survive, he had to join gangs. He learned the "crippled orphan boy" trick from them, where he would be the boy in question, but his gang would leave him behind.
• In the Batman: The Animated Series two-part adventure "Shadow of the Bat," documents are found which seem to indicate that Commissioner Gordon has been taking bribes from gangster Rupert Thorne. At a rally in support of Gordon, masked gangsters attack and nearly kill one of his deputies. It turns out that that deputy, Gil Mason is behind it. He was given away by the fact that he had ducked behind the bulletproof podium before he could have seen the guns.
• Big City Greens:
  • Subverted in "Cricketsitter". Tilly accidentally causes Cricket to get a dislocated shoulder, but disguises said incident like a Bavarian Fire Drill to sneak into the hospital without Bill seeing them.
  • Gramma pretends to be a blind old lady in "Rated Cricket" to trick a family into giving her the best seats in the movie theater.
  • Cricket pretends to be hurt "real bad" in "Dinner Party" to get Bill to come to him so he can ask him to let the Remingtons come for dinner.
  • In "Feud Fight", Chip Whistler assumes Cricket calling a truce with him is just so he can forfeit the fight and let his guard down so he can entice him into "decimating" him in order to make him look bad. No one was happy to see this.
  • Chip pulls a minor one in "Chipocalypse Now" to get Nancy re-arrested.
  • Cricket pulls one in "Squashed!" to distract the giant pumpkin zombie so Tilly can destroy it with the tractor.
• One Casper cartoon has Casper rescue a kitten from a pesky dog; after which said kitten begins to repeatedly torment the dog just to get Casper to keep scaring it away. This goes on until our friendly ghost saves the poor dog from the dogcatcher, and in the process discover the truth about the sneaky kitten, and have him make amends.
• Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers: After Dale stubs his toe and is mistaken for having injured his leg, he plays it for all its worth after receiving special treatment from Gadget.
• In the "Patients" episode of Clarence, Clarence is in the waiting room of a clinic while his mother is getting a check-up. While finding imaginative ways to pass the time, Tinia asks him to read her a princess story, sing a song and braid her hair, and when Clarence is too tired, Tinia gives him a candy bar, only to apologize for her actions when she tells her mother that he stole a piece of candy from her, and the desk nurse takes the candy jar away, and after a strugle, the candy flies out of the broken jar.
• One episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog has a wounded duckling that tortures Courage and eventually tries to get rid of Muriel so that it wouldn't have to share Eustace, of all people. Up until the getting-rid-of part, Muriel didn't think that the duckling was evil. Both Eustace and the duckling eventually end up on the moon. Somehow they come back, though.
• A very dark example from Drawn Together: in one episode Bambi shows up with his mother's bullet-ridden corpse, and Captain Hero, struck with guilt, decides that it is unfair to hunt game with assault weapons, destroying all of the weapons in the world. Later on, the deer and other animals get their revenge on humans, and Bambi later admits he killed his own mother just to go along with his Wounded Deer Gambit.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy:
  • One episode has Sarah leave Jimmy in the care of the Eds. She gives him a whistle "If anything goes wrong". When Ed accidentally blows the whistle himself, Jimmy quickly shoves some dirt in his mouth and starts crying. He tells Sarah the Eds made him eat dirt and were mean to him.
  • Another episode sees Eddy faking injuries to gain attention, although he is continually one-upped by Jimmy's (unintentional and real) injuries. Just as Eddy is about to go for broke and have Ed drop a house on him, Double D stops the contest by building a "play-safe suit" for Jimmy which gains him more attention. Not to be outdone, Eddy tries to build a better suit. In the end, both suits fail and their occupants are injured, although Jimmy garners sympathy again, whereas Eddy is beaten up by Kevin and Rolf.
  • There's also an episode where Eddy tries to pull this to get the trio into Kevin's house to watch TV, claiming that Ed is horribly injured and needs to recover in his TV room. Ed, being Ed, is far more hammy than he is convincing.
    Ed: Ow, my liver! Ow, my lasagna!
• The Fairly OddParents!:
  • Super Bike, in one of the many ways he manipulates Timmy, pretends to fall down and get injured, including pulling off and breaking his mirror. This ends up being his undoing, as the broken mirror clues Timmy in on how to get past his Nigh-Invulnerability.
  • In "Playdate of Doom", Foop plots to get rid of Poof by doing bad things and blaming them on Poof by pretending to be hurt so that Cosmo and Wanda will give Poof a time-out in a playpen that will warp him to another dimension.
• Family Guy:
  • A subplot in the episode "Love Thy Trophy" concerns Meg, working as a waitress in a diner, lying about being a teenage single mother and her "son" (Stewie) being addicted to crack so she would get hefty tips from pitying customers. (Of course, being the kind of show it is, this results in Stewie being taken away by social services until Lois can clear the situation up.)
  • "Cool Hand Peter" sees Peter, Quagmire, Cleveland, and Joe arrested during a road trip and put to work on a chain gang. When their sentence is going to be unfairly extended, they decide to escape. With the guards constantly watching, Joe deliberately falls out of his wheelchair and loudly insists he's got to get back in himself. When Peter asks what he's doing, Joe says that everyone always looks away in situations like these because it makes them uncomfortable. So, Joe continues to bemoan his difficulty in order to ensure the guards aren't looking when the group makes a run for it. It works, but a little bit too well, as Joe begins to seriously lament how he can't walk.
• In an episode of Garfield and Friends, Jon's cousin's son pulls two of these on Garfield: First, he orders his robot to kidnap Garfield and run him all over the yard until it breaks. Then he does the same with his rocket ship. Fortunately, Garfield is able to get a little revenge.
• One segment of Heathcliff & the Catillac Cats sees Heathcliff deal with "Terrible Tammy", a bullying female cat who muscles in on his territory. He uses this trick (since he never hits a lady) as payback; he feigns injury in front of her owner Marcy to make her reject the "naughty cat". While Tammy really had been beating him up, she hadn't done so at that particular moment.
• Justice League
  • Luthor is tricked into an Engineered Public Confession when he thought he had Superman at his mercy because of kryptonite, only for "Superman" to No-Sell it and reveal himself as J'onn J'onnz.
  • In the episode "A Better World", the League are imprisoned by their Alternate Self Knight Templar counterparts the Justice Lords. Batman couldn't think up of a way to escape since his Justice Lord counterpart is the warden, and believes any plan he thinks of the Lord Batman would just find a way to counter it. Instead, Lord Batman falls for the Flash's trick of increasing his heart rate to make it look like he flatlined.
• Kaeloo: In the episode "Let's Play Courtroom Drama", Mr. Cat is accused of attacking Quack Quack with a chainsaw, and Kaeloo tries to prove him guilty. Mr. Cat says that it was probably Kaeloo's alternate form, Bad Kaeloo, who is aggressive and does things beyond Kaeloo's conscious control. Kaeloo starts crying and says that she's going to leave Smileyland forever to keep her friends safe, and Mr. Cat, feeling guilty, confesses that it was him all along. Cue an Evil Laugh from Kaeloo.
• In the Origins Episode of The Legend of Korra (appropriately titled Beginnings), the spirit Vaatu tricks Wan into freeing him from Raava's clutches, saying that Raava is a bully that has been oppressing him for the last 10,000 years. Vaatu reveals himself to be a God of Evil soon after, plunging the world into chaos and threatening to cause The End of the World as We Know It if he isn't stopped.
• Used by Queen La in Disney's The Legend of Tarzan. Separated from her body, her spirit can move between two creatures touching. Jane is walking in the forest and sees a wounded animal. As she tends to it, La's spirit possesses her.

M-Z

• Miraculous Ladybug:
  • In "Chameleon", Lila lies about having injured her wrist so everyone brings her food from the cafeteria since she supposedly can't get it herself. To prove that Lila is lying, Marinette throws a napkin at her and she catches it with the hand that was supposedly sprained. When Marinette points this out, Lila claims that she once saw a man get his eye gouged out by a napkin and was trying to save Max, who was standing next to her, from the same fate, even if it meant further injuring her wrist. She then pretends to be in great pain, so the class turns against Marinette for supposedly bullying an innocent student.
  • In "Ladybug", when Lila and Marinette are the only two people in a hallway, Lila walks to the bottom of the stairs, lies on the floor, and starts screaming. When the principal comes out of his office, he sees Marinette at the top of the stairs and a seemingly injured Lila at the bottom of the stairs, and Lila claims that Marinette pushed her off.
• In the Motorcity finale, Julie does this after Tooley almost catches her trying to free Mike from KaneCo. She slaps the latter and then claims to the former that she did so because he came on to her while she was trying to feed him. Tooley buys it.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In "A Canterlot Wedding, Part 1" Princess Cadance Actually Chrysalis, queen of the Changelings, impersonating her breaks down into tears when Twilight Sparkle accuses her of being evil (and presents some halfway-decent evidence) during the wedding rehearsal. This causes Twilight's friends to become upset with her, her brother to change his mind about her being Best Mare, and Princess Celestia to be disappointed in her. Ouch.
  • However, in Part 2, when Twilight crashes the wedding ceremony itself right before Celestia can finish marrying Chrysalis and Shining Armor, when Chrysalis voices her disgust at Twilight's intervention and gets a puzzled, surprised look from Celestia, she attempts this again to regain everypony's support. It fails when the real Cadance appears, having been rescued by Twilight, proving her earlier claims were right all along, and forcing Chrysalis to drop her ruse in fury at being exposed.
• This seems to be a pattern for Philip Wittebane/Emperor Belos in The Owl House.
  • When Lilith and Luz encounter him in "Elsewhere and Elsewhen", Philip has a bandage wrapped around his leg, walks with a noticeable limp, and occasionally clutches his leg while hissing and grimacing in pain. Later on in the episode, after The Reveal that he only brought Luz and Lilith there as a sacrifice to distract the Stonesleeper guarding the Collector's tablet, he reveals that the bandage was only there to keep a collapsible shovel strapped to his leg, and completely loses the limp.
  • In "Hollow Mind", Luz and Hunter encounter a little boy in Belos's mind, believing him to be a manifestation of one of Belos's emotions, and subsequently try to protect him from the giant sludge monster they believe to be Belos's inner self. The boy seems terrified of the monster, clings to Luz and whimpers in terror when they encounter it, and bursts into tears at random points. It's not until the monster has been caught that the truth is revealed — the monster was an amalgamation of all the Palisman souls Belos has been consuming, while the little boy was the actual inner Belos, who cackles evilly before transforming back into his adult form.
  • In the finale, "Watching and Dreaming", after being defeated in the final battle, Belos appears as Phillip and pulls a story out of his ass about being possessed by some nebulous dark magic that made him do all his evil deeds against his will. By this point, Luz doesn't even try to buy it, and Phillip gradually drops the façade for a Knight Templar Motive Rant as the boiling rain of the Boiling Isles begins melting what's left of him down into a gloopy skeleton before Eda, King, and Raine finish him off.
• Popeye:
  • "Seein' Red, White and Blue" has Bluto faking injury and poor health to get out of being conscripted into the Navy. He gives up the charade on the Navy's behalf after seeing Japanese saboteurs beating up Popeye.
  • In "Hospitaliky", Popeye and Bluto discover that Olive Oyl works as a nurse at the local hospital. They try to feign illness to get her affection, but that falls flat when they start fighting. They spend the next several minutes trying and failing to get themselves injured so that they can be admitted to the hospital. Popeye finally succeeds when he force-feeds Bluto spinach, which somehow forces him to brutally assault Popeye. The episode closes with Popeye in a hospital bed covered in bandages, with Olive at his side.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998):
  • This is the entire plot for the episode "Mommy Fearest." Sedusa disguises herself as an ordinary woman named Ima Goodlady and begins dating Professor Utonium. She treats the girls like complete crap the entire time the Professor is away, but the second he comes back into the area she immediately begins playing the innocent victim act and claims the girls were threatening her, and he keeps falling for it. Even after her identity is exposed, she still tries this trick one last time... but this time Utonium isn't fooled.
  • The special "Dance Pantsed" has the girls throwing a staged tantrum in order to get the Professor to buy them a new dance video game.
• In The Real Ghostbusters, the Slimer! short "Tea but not Sympathy" has Manx feign injuries to trick Janine into taking him into the Firehouse so he can steal food behind her back and get Slimer into trouble by framing him for his food thefts and falsely accuse him of causing him harm.
• Rick and Morty: One episode of the third season fully explores how much Jerry has been using this through a "The Reason You Suck" Speech by Rick. He accuses Jerry of going through life being as pity-worthy as he possibly can, trying with the intention of failing and looking weak to others with full intention of making others take pity on him and do his work for him. Rick even accuses him of using this to get a job and get Beth to marry him.
• A Robot Chicken short had a hyena laughing at a lion for having a thorn stuck in its paw. After the lion beats the hyena up, the hyena calls the cops and says the lion is beating his (the lion's) wife. After the lion is arrested, the hyena then hits on the lioness.
• Rugrats: In the episode "Sand Ho", while playing as pirates, Admiral Angelico uses this trick to defeat and capture Long Tom Silver.
• In Scary Larry, Carnage pretends to have a mental breakdown as a publicity stunt.
• The Simpsons:
  • The episode "Homer of Seville" sees Homer become an opera singer after injuring his back (don't even ask) and getting stalked by various fangirls. Most of them are of the Abhorrent Admirer or Old Maid variety (hey, it is opera), but there is one gorgeous black-haired female biker who goes so far as to pay a visit to Homer at home and strip nude right in front of him. As Homer looks on in terrified shock, the woman threatens to cry rape if Homer tells Marge what he has seen. Cue Marge asking Homer if everything is all right in the living room, and Homer lying: "Uh, everyone's wearing clothes in here!"
  • "The Wandering Juvie" has Bart being sentenced to a correctional facility for delinquents and shackled to a female prisoner. The girl plots an escape from the jail, dragging Bart along with her. Later on, she taunts Bart by saying that if they are caught, she will cry to the police and tell them that Bart kidnapped her rather than the other way around - and even feigns crying in order to prove that she could pull it off. (Bart points out that the lie would be hard to believe, since the girl is bigger and stronger than him.) Toward the end of the episode, the girl starts crying for real when she admits to Bart that she has no family.
• South Park:
  • Cartman does this every now and then on, most notably in "La Petit Tourette" and "Sexual Harassment Panda". In the former case, his plan was to get away with swearing and eventually go on national television and use Tourette's as an excuse to make anti-semitic statements.
  • Played with in "Breast Cancer Show Ever," when Cartman has Wendy reprimanded by her parents for threatening to beat him up. It's almost a subversion in that Wendy really does want to beat Cartman up, but Cartman makes it seem as if he did nothing to provoke her anger and that she's a bully. In reality, he's the bully (an extremely cowardly one, but a bully nonetheless). The principal eventually convinces Wendy to follow through and give Cartman his just desserts.
  • Used by the succubus in "The Succubus." The kids believe that the woman Chef is engaged to is really a succubus that will suck out his life after their marriage. However, she in fact confirms it when she later visits the kids in Cartman's room and reveals her true face, threatening to kill the kids if they attempt to stop her. When Kyle, Stan, and Kenny confront her in public the day before the wedding at the rehearsal dinner, she feigns innocence and starts crying, wondering why they're saying such hurtful things, which in turn leads Chef to kick the kids out of the building. But when he actually sees the succubus, he apologizes to the kids.
  • Cartman, Stan and Kyle also pull this at least Once per Episode in Season Six, using Kenny's death to garner sympathy from their friends and family.
  • "Good Times With Weapons" opens with the boys trying to buy martial arts weapons from a stall at the Park County Fair. The vendor tells them that he can't sell them anything without their parents' permission. In response, the buys start crying, claiming that their parents are dead. Out of guilt over apparently reminding the kids of their claimed trauma, the vendor sells them the weapons they want. Later in the episode, Craig, Jimmy, Token, and Clyde show up with weapons of their own, stating that they purchased them from the same vendor using the same tactic.
• SpongeBob SquarePants
  • In "Chocolate with Nuts", SpongeBob and Patrick almost pull one on a customer, but that customer turns out to be seriously injured. He eventually turns out to be the con man they encountered, who pretended to be injured to take all the money they've earned, thus he Out-Gambitted them.
  • In "Krabs vs. Plankton", Plankton slips while in the Krusty Krab and decides to pretend to be seriously injured and sue Krabs for everything he's got, including the Krabby Patty formula. He almost succeeds in the court case (on account of his own good acting and Krabs' genuine nastiness) until SpongeBob exposes his lies in front of the judge.
  • "Accidents Will Happen": Squidward seemingly twists his ankle after an accident in the back room and pesters Mr. Krabs into becoming his servant while threatening to call the OWS to fine him. A security camera reveals Squidward's injury was fake and he did not get hurt when he fell off the shelf of Krabby Patties when he took a nap on it and weighed it down.
• Star Wars Rebels:
  • "Homecoming": The rebel strike team gets on board the Imperial carrier by flying in a stolen TIE bomber, and having two of Phoenix Squadron's A-Wings stage an attack so they'll quickly be given clearance to land.
  • "Twin Suns": Maul does this by proxy, via luring Ezra to Tatooine and tricking him into getting lost in the desert wastes, knowing that Obi-Wan Kenobi, who Maul has been trying to find for months, won't be able to resist going to help Ezra when he starts to succumb to the desert. It works.
• Steven Universe: In "Garnet's Universe", Ringo does this to make Garnet defeat the Fox that protects a magical gem, by claiming that he is the gem's guardian, not the Fox, and the Fox beat him up to take over, which is exactly what Ringo plans to do. It works.
• Taz-Mania: In "Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty", Molly finds a stray kitten and decides to adopt him as her pet. The kitten takes a dislike to Taz and tries to frame him for bad behavior when Molly isn't looking. At one point, he stuffs himself into Taz's mouth to make it look like Taz was trying to eat him.
• Teen Titans Go! episode "Kicking a Ball & Pretending To Be Hurt has this predictably enough at one point: Cyborg fakes an injury after lightly bumping into Beast Boy in order to get the latter red carded by Robin during post-soccer downtime in Titans' Tower.
• Samey from Total Drama Pahkitew Island has had enough of her older twin sister Amy always tormenting her and (partly advised by Jasmine) calls her out in front of everyone for her behavior. However, Amy uses this to whine about her being mean, and everyone except Jasmine turns on Samey.
• The Venture Bros.:
  • In "I Know Why The Caged Bird Kills" Myra Brandish kidnaps the boys by pretending to be unconscious at the side of the road when they are out learning to drive. Next comes the knockout gas and waking up bound in a filthy motel full of cats.
  • When Brock and Phantom Limb team up in "Hate Floats", they use this technique on the Monarch's mutinous henchmen. First, Limb throws himself to the ground wailing in pain, using his invisible limbs to appear gruesomely maimed. Then Brock pleads with the henchmen to give him their weapons so he can Mercy Kill Limb. When they hand them over, he tosses them aside and bashes their heads together.

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