Batman Gambit / The DCU

Batman Gambits throughout the various incarnations of The DCU.

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Comic Books

Comic Books

• Batman
• Superman

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• Batgirl:
  • In Elseworld's Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl, Batgirl needed to lure Lex Luthor to Gotham City to "bring him, set him up, and take him down". So she announced that she'd allow him build a new factory in Gotham, knowing that Luthor's ego wouldn't let him miss a chance to go there and show his genius off. Her plan worked, but thanks to Supergirl's help.
  • Batgirl (2011): In the Night of Owls crossover, the Court of Owls forbids James Gordon from activating the Bat Signal in order to prove to the citizens of Gotham that there is nobody to rescue them. James, being James, refuses to cowed by their threats and activates the signal...which was what they wanted, since they knew he would never bow to their pressure and they had replaced the Bat-logo with the Owl symbol.
• Chlorophylle: Zizanion, unable to attack Mithron because of his guards, delivers a message announcing he will make the palace blow up at midday. Bouclette, as a precaution to protect the king, has him immediatly moved to a different, more isolated castle in the country. Turns out this is exactly what Zizanion expected them to do, as it makes it easier for him to place the bomb in this more isolated and unguarded castle before Mithron arrives. Fortunately, their car ends up with a damaged tyre and they arrive too late, causing the castle to blow up without them inside.
• During Mark Waid's run on The Flash, Abra Kadabra successfully takes Linda Park out of Time to the extent that literally nobody remembers her with the hope that this would result in Wally being lost in the Speed Force without Linda as his "lightning-rod". After Wally regains his memories of Linda during a trip to an alternate universe and Linda escapes, the two return to their home universe but find that everyone else is basically unable to see Linda. In order to force Abra Kadabra to undo his spell, Wally poses as Eobard Thawne and reinforces how he doesn't believe Kadabra's talk about Linda, anticipating that Kadabra's ego would drive him to undo the spell so that he can prove he scored such a decisive victory over his enemy.
• The Joker, in some interpretations, is immune to the Batman Gambit based simply on the fact that he is completely unpredictable. And moreover, that if he can be bothered, he's savvy enough to see through them. Worst of all is if Batman finds himself on the receiving end of a gambit orchestrated by the Joker, something writer Scott Snyder did heavily during the times he used the character in the New 52. After all, the Joker knows Batman just as well as the Bat knows him.
  • In the Joker graphic novel, the premise is that Joker, somehow, gets out of Arkham through the front gate. It's suggested but never stated that he was legally released. Later, he intimates to the Riddler that this was a sham.
    Joker: "The best place to hide, Edward, is in sanity!"
• Watchmen:
  • Ozymandias needs super-powerful Dr. Manhattan out of the picture in order to carry out his plan. To accomplish this, Ozymandias connives to induce cancer in several of Manhattan's associates, then arranges for him to appear on a live television talk show where a journalist will ambush him with the accusation of having caused the cancers. This predictably drives Manhattan (whose emotional connection to humanity had been weakening for years) to decide that life on Earth isn't worth the hassle and teleport to Mars.
  • The Comedian's murder had already left Rorschach wondering whether someone was "gunning for masks" (i.e., planning to kill all the active and retired superheroes). When Dr. Manhattan is forced into exile, Rorschach recognizes that he was framed, and becomes convinced that a mask-killer is at work. He's wrong, but Ozymandias decides to encourage Rorschach's belief by making himself the next target. Through intermediaries, he hires an assassin to kill him, then evades the attack, disarms the assassin, and kills him in a way that looks like suicide. This not only convinces Nite Owl and the others that Rorschach is right, but also puts Ozymandias himself beyond suspicion. Later, Ozymandias contrives to have Rorschach arrested under circumstances that make him appear to be the mask-killer.
  • In the end, Nite Owl and Rorschach discover that Ozymandias is responsible, but when they (along with Dr. Manhattan and Silk Spectre) confront him with the evidence, he reveals that his plot has averted World War III, and the others can't ever disclose what they know without jeopardizing the peace and possibly bringing about the destruction of all life on Earth. They are forced to help him cover up his crimes. It's also implied that Nite Owl and Rorschach only uncover the truth because Ozymandias has left the evidence for them to find on his office computer, protected only by a very weak password (and a user interface that actually tells them when they have a partial match and encourages them to keep guessing). By luring them to his Antarctic headquarters while Ozymandias's masterstroke is being carried out in New York, he ensures that they can't interfere with it (and, in fact, don't even know it's happening until too late).
• One of Tim's final acts in Robin (1993) before becoming Red Robin involves poisoning Lady Shiva with a toxin that will only effect her with an elevated heart rate in preparation for a fight before Shiva has even challenged him.
• In Green Lantern Brightest Day, Lobo attacks Atrocitus, trying to get the bounty on his head. The White Lantern Battery orders Hal Jordan, Carol Ferris, and Sinestro to help Atrocitus, so they do. After Lobo is driven off, the four of them vow to work together to find the missing emotional entities. Atrocitus hired Lobo to attack him in the first place and take a dive, in order to get the others to trust him. As payment, Lobo is given a Red Lantern Ring.

Films

Films

• In Batman: Under the Red Hood, Red Hood targets Black Mask, who breaks the Joker out of Arkham to kill him. The Joker uses Black Mask and his colleagues as bait to draw out Red Hood. However, the gambit was actually Red Hood's; the Joker was his real target all along and he had gone after Black Mask in order to make him desperate enough to turn to the Joker and save him the trouble of breaking him out.
• In The LEGO Batman Movie, the Joker pulls this on Batman. He captures all the villains of Gotham, taking away Batman's purpose, thus tricking Batman into sending him to the Phantom Zone to recruit more powerful villains. And releases them all on Gotham.
  • He doesn't seem to have learned from this in The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part, as Queen Watevra Wa'nabi tricks him into a matrimonial ceremony by appealing to his ego and desire to one-up Superman.
• Ironically enough, the Joker pulls off one of these after another in The Dark Knight. The bank heist at the beginning requires every one of his henchman dispatching each other at just the right time, with no slip-ups... even including the last henchman figuring it out at exactly the right time to be standing in just the right spot when the school bus comes crashing through the wall. The escape relies on another example: the school bus joins a line of other school buses, which the Joker knows the police will ignore.
  • His escape from prison is a masterful example of this. The Joker pushes Batman's buttons and taunts him until Batman gets angry enough to smash the Joker's head against the one-way glass. He then does the EXACT SAME THING to the guard watching him, causing him to lower his guard and allow the Joker to take him hostage using one of the glass shards from the broken mirror. And then of course he uses his leverage to get the other cops to give him access to a phone. Had Batman not smashed the Joker into the window, or had the glass not splintered in just the right way, or had the guard just left and locked the door, none of that would have worked.
  • He has one fail on him, though. His last plot hinges on the civilian ferry seeing the prison ferry as an acceptable sacrifice and/or the prison ferry being ruthless enough to sacrifice the civilian ferry. In the end, the civilian ferry couldn't bring itself to blow up the prisoners, and the prison ferry decided that Even Evil Has Standards.
  • In The Dark Knight Rises, Bane's plan hinges on Bruce Wayne and a few other people responding exactly the way he predicts they will every step along the way.
    • Perhaps the most audacious example of this is that the inmates of the prison won't tell Bruce that the child who escaped was Talia — they leave it up to him and he assumes it was Bane. Justified by the fact that the person telling the story thought it was just a legend of the prison, and didn't fully believe it himself.
• The ending of Superman II hinges on Lex Luthor selling out Superman and telling Zod about the "take away all super powers" device... which Superman, having seen this coming, had set to affect everyone outside the device.
• In Watchmen, Ozymandias's plan could only work assuming that the rest of the Watchmen, especially Jon, were able to be manipulated.

Live-Action TV

Live-Action TV

• In the Season 2 finale of Arrow, Oliver Queen needs to inject Slade with the cure for the mirakuru, but can’t get close enough to do it. Slade has kidnapped Laurel, the woman Oliver loves. Knowing that, and having recently found out that Slade had cameras all over his house, Oliver has a conversation with Felicity in front of the cameras and tells her that Slade took the wrong woman, and that she’s the one he loves. Slade kidnaps her and attracts Oliver to her. What Slade didn’t see is that Oliver gave Felicity the cure and the whole thing was a plan to get her close to him and use it. It worked.
• In The Flash a criminal mastermind gathers a team to supposedly steal a foreign treasure. While the police sit on the treasure, he sends them out to pick the city clean. As it turns out they're just distractions to pull the police away so he can steal the treasure.
• Appropriately enough, Gotham has a brilliant example of one, although it's done by Oswald Cobblepot, aka the Penguin rather than Bruce Wayne. In exchange for information about his treacherous Dragons, Don Falcone allows Cobblepot to be executed by Jim Gordon, who Cobblepot (correctly) believes he can persuade to fake his death. Cobblepot then is able to come back to Gotham, infiltrate a rival gang in order to act as The Mole, provoke his former boss and Falcone's treacherous underling Fish Mooney to overreact, kill her lover/conspirator on the orders of the rival crime boss, and get the rival crime boss to give Falcone a seemingly worthless piece of real estate as "compensation".
• Smallville:
  • "Abyss": Brainiac started removing Chloe's memories, knowing that in his desperation, Clark would rebuild the Fortress to save her, which allows Brainiac to take over the Fortress, fully morph Davis into Doomsday and possess Chloe, which is another gambit as Brainiac knows Clark will never hurt Chloe even with Brainiac inside her.
  • The whole episode of "Roulette" is one courtesy of Chloe Sullivan, who's revealed to have hired the villain in order to get Oliver to return to heroism and did it right under Clark's nose. Like all things involving Oliver, it is of rather dubious morality. She claims she did what she had to do, and for the most part she anticipated Oliver's actions, but with Clark involved but not knowing the plan, it could go horribly wrong very easily.
  • Amanda Waller pulls off one in "Absolute Justice". It looks like she's having the members of the long-retired Justice Society of America killed as a continuation of the government frame that originally put them out of business. Reality is she's provoking the surviving JSA members to come out of retirement to get back in the game, and meet and inspire the new generation of superheroes, because of something coming that will cause the planet to need all of its heroes.

Western Animation

Western Animation

• In one episode of a Cartoon Network Latin American bumper, The Aquaman & Friends Action Hour, Lex Luthor tries to sabotage Aquaman's kids show by making an overly complicated scheme that will make a tractor, a mortal cobra, and a tractor driven by the mortal cobra (among other things) suddenly assault the live stage, and activates when Aquaman plays the guitar in an announced singalong. Lex even states that "it. cannot. fail!". At the end it fails because Aquaman never actually plays the guitar and do playback instead. A Janitor at the night, however...
• DC Animated Universe:
  • Examples from Batman: The Animated Series that were not planned by Batman:
    • In "Joker's Wild", an industrialist who is secretly going broke themes his new casino after The Joker, while all the time denying the connection. He expects this to infuriate the Joker, who will come destroy the place, which will trigger the casino owner's multi-million dollar insurance policy. Unfortunately, Batman tells the Joker all this mid-rampage (when the Joker has set up a roulette-wheel style Death Trap designed to blow up the casino and Batman at once), and the Joker decides a better revenge is confronting the industrialist "man to clown" as he says, and then take over the place. "But that doesn't let you off the hook," he tells Batman, before altering his device so it only disposes of Batman. (And true to Bond Villain Stupidity form, he leaves, letting Batman escape.)
    • Another such gambit appears in "Joker's Millions", which involves a gangster and rival of the Joker dying and willing him $250 million. On paper. What really happened was that only $10 million of the inheritance was real. The rival (who saw this as the perfect way to get even with the Joker before he died from his illness) was banking on the Joker's massive ego not allowing him to admit to being fooled, which makes things hard for the Joker when it's time to pay inheritance tax.
    • When Supergirl and Batgirl teamed up against Poison Ivy, Livewire and Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy threw some seeds at Batgirl, knowing Supergirl would vaporize them with heat vision, releasing a toxic gas.
      Poison Ivy: You are so predictable.
  • In Superman's show, the episode featuring Mxyzptlk was basically a series of Batman Gambit's on the part of Clark to get the fifth dimensional being to disappear almost as soon as he arrives. (The final one took a little longer, but Superman gets credit for apparently having thought up a rather clever one pretty much on the spur of the moment.)
  • In Justice League, the Joker pulled a pretty slick one, courtesy of the Royal Flush Gang. He broke them out of a top-secret government research facility and used them to keep the Leaguers busy looking for the 26 bombs he'd placed on the Las Vegas strip. Meanwhile, he broadcast the whole thing on live television, pulling in huge ratings...
    Joker: And that was the point all along; this whole thing was a stunt to get as many of you watching as possible—and it worked! My Royal Flush Gang provided the conflict, the Justice League brought the star power. And I brought the shocking surprise ending; everyone watching the show right now is witness to my greatest joke ever."
  • Also in Justice League, Batman himself pulled one off in "A Better World". When the Evil Twin Mirror Universe counterparts of the Justice League, the Justice Lords, take them captive, Lord!Batman explicitly tells League!Batman that he's already thought of everything he could do to try to escpe and League!Batman tells Flash in the next cell over that he's not even going to try because of that. In the next scene, Flash fakes a heart attack get to Lord!Batman into his cell and then turns the tables on him since someone had to get them out if Batman wasn't going to. Naturally, that was Batman's plan in the first place.
    League!Batman: I couldn't [do anything]. Not with him anticipating everything I could ever think of. But who could anticipate you?
• Superfriends: The master of the Trope himself did it twice in the same episode, against the same villain. Said villain was using an amulet that could cause Rapid Aging or reverse aging. After using it to turn Superman, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman into kids, he threatened to turn Batman and Robin into "feeble old men". Batman's response was "Do your worst!" and he did, only to have Batman and Robin dodge the blast as planned and it hitting the three de-aged heroes behind him returning them to adulthood. In response, the villain turned the amulet on a guy he had previously aged, turning the poor guy to dust in order to cover his escape. Batman — now realizing his dependence on the thing — put the dust in a canister, then put that inside a mannequin wearing a Batman costume. When the villain tried to the de-aging thing again, he zapped the victim's remains, restoring his body and true age. (And was easily disarmed of the amulet by said former victim.)
• Teen Titans (2003): This is part of Slade's M.O.:
  • In "Apprentice", Slade forces Robin to be his apprentice by infecting the other Titans with Nanoscopic Probes, which he can activate if Robin doesn't obey him. When he is about to destroy them, Robin decides to infect himself with the same probes. He tells Slade that if he loses his friends, Slade loses his apprentice. Slade angrily destroys the controller.
  • Then there's the whole Terra business. Throughout Season 2, Slade manages to successfully lure the newcomer into joining his side and helping him through with his plot to take the Teen Titans out. Even though it backfires on him in the end, there was still one thing that he was victorious in doing: stopping the Teen Titans from getting a Sixth Ranger, because she ends up as a statue by the end of the season and regardless of what might have happened to her afterwards, she never comes back in her normal capacity again.

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