Unwitting Pawn

"I was a fool. I had been deceived that I had been working for a greater good. I was in fact an unknowing tool of a greater evil."

— Shunjinko's biography, Mortal Kombat: Deception

This is the kind of person that the Magnificent Bastard and Batman Gambit depend on. Not only does an Unwitting Pawn fail to stop the bad guy, but he actually furthers the villain's plan in the process. The Manipulative Bastard will take great delight in using them and then deconstructing their naivete and blind faith as they gloat (in which case compare What Have I Done). Not surprisingly, they also have a tendency to die ironically after inadvertently helping the villain. But if they survive... there's bound to be some nasty surprises in store for the Bastards.

These guys are not always being manipulated by the villain; sometimes they blunder their way into helping him of their own accord. Not that the villain's going to examine his gift horse for cavities...

The Wide-Eyed Idealist often becomes this, but sometimes the Knight Templar and Well-Intentioned Extremist can fall into this too. When the main character does this, and then has to fix it, it's Nice Job Breaking It, Hero.

Sometimes the unwitting pawn is deserving of his fate. They may be a Corrupt Corporate Executive, Evil Businessman, or someone else who has achieved great success through questionable means. Sometimes, he owes his success to someone he screwed over. They will often fall victim to blackmail or the reminder of what could happen "if the truth should get out...". Sometimes, the pawn is allowed to remain a figurehead to keep up appearances while his strings are pulled behind the scenes. This often happens to Corrupt Politicians as well who come to realize that they probably had a lot of help to realize their ambitions and get to the top.

Compare Out-Gambitted, Unwitting Instigator of Doom. Contrast the Spanner in the Works, who just as ignorantly harms these schemes.

Tend to be played by The Chessmaster, logically enough. But also the Manipulative Bastard uses them too.

Beware: many examples are by nature spoilers!

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Examples:

• Video Games

Anime & Manga

• In Attack on Titan, Annie, Reiner, and Bertolt are revealed to have been this all along. As part of Marley's Warrior program, they were raised to believe the people living within the Walls were evil and a threat to the safety of the entire world. Grisha's backstory includes the creation of the modern program, with the Marleyan government announcing that King Fritz had sent a message threatening to use the Wall Titans to destroy the world. However, Grisha is later told by Kruger that there was no such message, because the ruler of the Walls is controlled by the First King's "Will" and cannot act to even defend their people. Marley is actually after the natural resources underneath the Walled territory and wants to exterminate everyone in their way. To this end, they invented the whole "threat" and manipulated children into doing their dirty work. Even worse, Kruger mentions that once Marley has obtained the Founding Titan, they will likely use it to exterminate all Eldians, including those serving them. As such, the Warriors were tricked into seeking out the Coordinate not to save their people, but to give Marley the means to carry out a Final Solution.
• Berserk:
  • Griffith presents himself to the Pope of the Holy Church as God's prophesied messiah, inspiring the old man to essentially serve as his biggest hype machine, further easing his manipulative influence throughout Midland... and all the while remaining blissfully unaware of his true, vile nature.
  • A lesser example, but nonetheless one that creates long-lasting consequences, is Skull Knight's attempt to kill Griffith with a mystical attack, only for the latter to redirect said attack into accidentally destroying the gate that separates the physical and astral planes in the Berserk-verse. This allows Griffith to unleash hell on earth.
• Black Clover:
  • Rades Spirito, Valtos and Sally were this to Licht aka Patolli, who hated them for being humans as well as being backstabbing and traitorous, only keeping them around due to their magical prowess and promptly sacrifices them once he had everything he needed.
  • In a bit of Laser-Guided Karma, Patolli himself as well as the entire vengeful Elf Tribe, to resurrect which Patolli killed the Wizard King and his subordinates for, have been pawns to Zagred, the Devil who actually committed the Elf Massacre, and framed the First Wizard King as well by copying his magic and letting the Elves think the humans betrayed them, all so that Zagred can break Patolli with despair and possess him.
  • Literally every single character is being played by Lucius Zogratis for him to steal his sibling's magic alongside the king of devils Lucifero's, so he gains god-like powers that allow him to start a holy war that would wipe out humanity and resurrect them as immortal, angelic superhumans, making it so the Kingdom's inequality and social prejudice will no longer exist.
• Played with in Bleach, where Magnificent Bastard Aizen is unable to manipulate Ichigo directly, so it is revealed that instead he manipulates almost EVERYONE ELSE in the story (including everyone Ichigo has fought, as well as Orihime) since before the story started so Ichigo will do what he wants. He has in fact been keeping an eye on Ichigo since his birth due to being the instigator in his parents' meeting.
• In A Certain Magical Index, seemingly everyone is a pawn of Aleister Crowley. A number of them are aware of this (so, not unwitting), but The Hero, Touma, is not. There are even some hints that Aleister is trying to pull one over on Aiwass, though until we actually know what his plan is it's hard to say.
• In the anime of Chrono Crusade, nearly everything that the main characters do seem to play right into Aion's hands. In the end, even though almost all of the main cast die, they only seem to stop him temporarily.
• Poor Suzaku Kururugi from Code Geass. Being an emotional, impulsive, and naive mix of Death Seeker and Wide-Eyed Idealist in a series full of Chessmasters and Manipulative Bastards is definitely his perdition. On the other hand, his supernaturally effective combat abilities and tendency to run head first into dangerous situations without telling anybody means he's derailed almost as many schemes as he's aided.
  • Same for the Order of the Black Knights, which was first manipulated by Lelouch before becoming Schneizel's pawns. Lelouch actually is the hero who is trying to save the world. He has a lot of bad luck and some questionable methods, but the Black Knights generally benefited from his actions, manipulation aside. Schneizel, not so much. He has decent luck, if not good, and his methods are not questionable — they're definitely not good for the human race as a whole.
• Alice of Code Geass: Nightmare of Nunnally, desperate to save Nunnally, accepts help from Anya and proceeds to Kamine Island. It turns out that Anya was possessed by Empress Marianne, who needed Nunnally to complete her and Charles' Assimilation Plot. Thankfully, Alice telling Nunnally that she values her as an individual derails the plan.
• Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School:
  • Downplayed for Izuru Kamukura. In his introduction in Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, he was supposedly the one responsible for starting The Tragedy (albeit manipulated by Junko) by killing the student council of Hope's Peak Academy. The anime shows the direct leadup to the event and pretty much confirms that Alter Ego Junko was flat-out lying about Izuru being a willing collaborator. He did willingly allow Junko to continue her evil plans because she told him the results might be interesting, but he actually just watched the Student Council kill each other, only killing one person in self-defense. Junko manipulated video of that kill to make it look like he'd massacred everyone in service of her plan. Izuru didn't really know the full extent of her plans, and eventually turns against her when Junko kills Chiaki.
  • Kyosuke Munakata from the Future Arc is a straight example, as his extremist anti-despair views mean that he plays right into the Remnants of Despair's hands by going on a rampage murdering the Future Foundation leadership (when most of them were genuinely trying to help the world) and trying to kill Makoto Naegi because he was an All-Loving Hero (Munakata thought that he was being too soft) instead of, y'know, working with people to get out of the latest killing game. It turns out that he was serving the Remnants of Despair more directly than anyone, including himself, thought- his girlfriend Chisa was actually a Remnant of Despair (having been brainwashed into it during the Despair Arc) and she was pushing him into extremism because she knew full well his heavy-handed ideology was going to harm his own cause more than that of Despair.
  • In general, unless your name is Izuru Kamakura, if you spoke to Junko or get involved with her at any point, she will play you like a fiddle and you'll have no idea what's actually going on. Look no further to the Reserve Course students who are outright manipulated to burn down Hope's Peak, kill most of the students and commit suicide. The only person who will genuinely and unconditionally do work for her is Monaca Towa and even then she's still considered another victim rather than the Junko-like beast she tried to become and is intended to be.
• In Death Note, nearly everybody falls victim to this trope at some point, Chessmasters included. Misa is the only major character who does not, and that's likely because she makes it clear in their first conversation that she doesn't mind being used by Light. She certainly is a pawn, but not an unwitting one.
  • Every member of the Task Force ends up being suckered in by Light at some point, not only buying his innocence, but also treating him as their actual leader and the new L.
  • Double Subverted by Rem, who kills L for Light in order to save Misa from being arrested. She figures out exactly what Light is trying to get her to do, how he's getting her to do it, and what will happen if she goes through with it (she dies)... And she does it anyway.
  • Perhaps the biggest Unwitting Pawn in the series is Light himself. For all of his chessmaster pretensions, Xanatos-grade scheming, and proclamations of Godhood, he was never anything more than a plaything for Ryuk's personal amusement. The best part is that Ryuk actually spells that out to him — along with what will ultimately happen to him — within minutes of first meeting him but Light never realizes the full implications until it is too late.
    • Averted, and very much so. Light understands perfectly well what he is to Ryuk, which is why he makes sure to stay interesting in his clever Scheherezade Gambit, which remains very effective until Light is cornered and captured, and thus no longer able to provide entertainment and apples for Ryuk.
  • L falls headfirst into this trope when he decides to test the thirteen day rule, which provokes Rem to kill him, exactly as Light planned. In the manga, his thoughts before his death leave it unambiguous that it wasn't the outcome he considered.
• Fairy Tail: Jellal is victim of this twice. He spends eight years as Ultear's pawn, and then Brain uses him to awaken Nirvana. To a lesser extent Reitei Lyon and his entire group, everyone working under Jellal in the Tower of Heaven, the first magic council. Basically, if you've spoken to Ultear, assume you're being used.
• Oliver Cromwell, leader of the Reconquista movement and Big Bad of the first arc of The Familiar of Zero is ultimately this for King Joseph of Gallia, the ultimate Big Bad of much of the series. Cromwell's rebellion would not have gotten anywhere without Gallian aid and the only reason why Joseph helped in the first place was so he could use the chaos of the war as a cover to slip his agents into Albion in order to find the Founder's Music Box as part of his plan to gather Brimir's Void relics and harness their power.
• In Fullmetal Alchemist, Kimblee masses the Drachman army to attack Amestris from the north, in order to cause enough bloodshed to complete Father's giant Transmutation Circle. All the Drachmans are defeated except for the General, who calls Kimblee out. Kimblee then coolly states that he didn't care which side lost as long as lots of people died. The General is then hit by one last shot from the Amestrians, to add death to insult and injury.
  • Hohenheim's backstory reveals that the Emperor of Xerxes also fit this bill. Father lured him into creating a nation-wide transmutation circle, claiming it would grant the Emperor immortality. Instead, Father used it to give immortality to himself and Hohenheim, at the price of the entire nation.
    • Father wasn't lying when he said he would grant the Emperor immortality, he just never said the Emperor would be immortal inside the stone.
  • The upper echelon of Central's military were suckered into following the same scheme with similar promises.
  • In Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), the homunculi manipulate alchemists into trying to create the Philosopher's Stone so that their leader Dante can use it for her own immortality. Dante also falsely promises to make the homunculi human if they succeed.
• Gundam:
  • Treize Khushrenada is such a Magnificent Bastard he turns essentially the ENTIRE CAST of Mobile Suit Gundam Wing into Unwitting Pawns.
  • After War Gundam X: Carris Nautilus is a talented artificial Newtype pilot, who believes he's protecting the peace of Fort Severn, but really, his leader, Nomoa Long is using him as a pawn in his revenge plot.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam SEED: Everyone — but especially Patrick Zala and Muruta Azrael — serve as Unwitting Pawns to series' Big Bad Rau Le Creuset.
  • In Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, Shinn Asuka, and to a lesser extent, the rest of the Minerva's crew, are the Unwitting Pawns of Chairman Durandal.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury: Suletta Mercury is being manipulated by her mother Prospera as part of her agenda.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Stardust Crusaders: In his Establishing Character Moment, Hol Horse sees Nena as a gullible young woman he can exploit, as he later tells J. Geil that women who are devoted enough to sacrifice their lives for him are "useful". Ironically, Nena herself is using Hol Horse to get close to the Joestar group so she can kill them.
  • Golden Wind: Diavolo was using The Hitman Team to fight off the heroes, hoping they'd kill each other, rather than kill them all himself. This plan goes rather swimmingly for the most part, but turns out to be a mistake that almost gets him killed by the remaining member, Risotto, if not for a coincidental attack by Narancia on the latter.
  • Stone Ocean: Jolyne gets used to lure her father, Jotaro, into a trap when she is framed for a hit-and-run, which Pucci uses the opportunity to catch Jotaro off-guard and steal his memories and Stand.
  • JoJolion: Jobin didn't realize that the Rock Humans were willing to harm his family to get the Locacaca Fruit when he realized Poor Tom lied about Ozon Baby's powers. He survives their attempt to dispose of him and come out of it with the long end of the stick.
• Kagerou Project: Ayano. After finding evidence that her father is under the Demonic Possession of the Wide-Open Eyes Snake and that he will kill her younger siblings and two thirds of her social circle to succeed in creating a new Medusa in our world. Understandably, she falls into despair, and after a long conversation with the snake himself, Ayano decides that the only way is to kill herself, enter the Daze to get possessed by a snake herself, and choose to stay behind — ensuring the Medusa plan cannot come off. Except, that was what he wanted all along; by having his plan ruined, his host's wish cannot be fulfilled; the Snake has an excuse to reset time, thereby ensuring he will be able to continue existing.
• In Maiden Rose, by launching an offensive against a train invading his country without orders Taki ends up playing right into his ally Princess Theodora's hands (she having secretly murdered everyone on the train herself in a coup before he fired on it), and is placed under house arrest despite being the commander holding the front in a war against their mutual enemy.
• Mazinger Z: Dr. Hell was Archduke Gorgon's unwitting pawn. Gorgon wanted to destroy both Dr. Hell and Mazinger-Z, so he helped Hell to fight Kouji Kabuto and his allies because the constant conflict weakened and wore the heroes down, and as soon as Hell stopped being useful, he abandoned him and let him die (or killed him personally in some versions) while his War Beasts finished Mazinger-Z off.
• So many in Monster as the series' Big Bad, Johan, plays everyone like a fiddle in order to get what he wants. At one point, he has a town of Unwitting Pawns as he moves them to the point where they all start massacring each other.
• Naruto:
  • At the beginning of the series, we have the Sound Genin, used by Orochimaru in the Chunin Exams. Dosu actually realises this, but all three meet a premature demise before he can do anything about it.
  • The Akatsuki as a whole were this to their true leader, Tobi, who manipulated them into believing he was a clueless member of the organization but used them to further achieve his Eye of the Moon Plan. Besides Tobi, the only Akatsuki members who know their true goal are Kisame and Zetsu.
  • Then Sasuke which was the Unwitting Pawn of both Itachi and Tobi. No wonder he developed Chronic Backstabbing Disorder.
    • Itachi ultimately was one for Tobi. Itachi believed, like almost everyone else who was confronted by him, that Tobi was Madara, and despite his efforts to act in defiance, all of his failsafes to protect Sasuke from Tobi failed and he only succeeded in making Sasuke into a more powerful and hateful pawn for Tobi to manipulate.
    • Yahiko also became a pawn to Tobi, since his suicide was Nagato's Start of Darkness and made him join Tobi which in turn allowed Tobi to take Akatsuki under his control.
    • Also Danzo, which in spite of all his motives also became this to Tobi. So nearly all his actions played into Tobi's hands: His union with Hanzo in the betrayal of Nagato allowed Tobi to take Akatsuki under his control. Also he manipulated Itachi into slaying his clan which allowed Tobi not only to acquire a large number of Sharingan, but also use Itachi to find a new pawn in the person of Sasuke. And Danzo is the one who reveals to the Kages that Tobi is Madara, which is exactly what Tobi wants them to believe.
    • Also Kakashi became one to Tobi or rather Obito. The entire fight with Kakashi into the Kamui dimension was planned by Obito in order to remove Madara's seal as it prevented him from becoming the Ten Tails Jinchuuriki, and Kakashi did what Obito wanted: Hit him in the heart.
  • Rin and Kakashi (although the latter's part was just a happy coincidence) were pawns in Madara's plan to create a successor by driving Obito to despair.
  • The entire world, but especially Indra, the Uchiha Clan, Madara, and Kabuto were this to Black Zetsu in his pursuit to revive Kaguya.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: What Shinji Ikari appears to be this in whatever it is his, father, Gendo is planning. But there is a rather big twist. In the end, it turns Shinji was only ever of minor importance to Gendo's plans; Gendo only ever really needed him to pilot Unit-01, truly nothing more and nothing less. In reality, it turns out Shinji's true crucial role that he never knew anything about or never saw coming, was as the lynchpin in his mother, Yui's, plan to derail SEELE's Assimilation Plot in the final minutes of the eleventh hour.
  • As part of the backstory, Misato's father, Dr. Katsuragi, was manipulated by SEELE into causing Second Impact.
  • Rebuild of Evangelion has this really bad. Everyone is pawns to Gendo. In the series at least, it's eventually shown that Gendo isn't quite as slick as he thought he was when Rei and Ritsuko turn on him and Seele sends troops to kill him. In the end ,he doesn't get what he wants, largely because Rei gives control to Shinji instead, who ends up killing him in Instrumentality. In Rebuild, he somehow manages to trick Seele into killing themselves (shutting themselves down thinking it would help the plan), and he manages to con Kaworu, who's an all-knowing Angel himself. Admittedly, Kaworu figures it out at the last minute, but because Shinji had already been sold on the idea that the spears would fix the problem, he didn't listen to him and pulled them anyway. He even allows Misato's team to show up to stop the Impact, because it wasn't time (he just wanted Unit 13 to obtain God mode).
  • Another interpretation is that everyone is a Unwitting Pawn for Yui Ikari.
• One Piece:
  • Whitebeard was a target for this. The World Government wanted to kill him and his whole crew with a barricade killzone trap and execute Ace, the son of the Pirate King once they are stuck as a warning to all Pirates and cement their power. However, Whitebeard, while he still dies, manages to re-ignite the Golden Age of Pirates, and most of his crew and allies survive. Also, technically Ace was saved, but still dies anyways. However, in the end, he, and technically the WG, is still fooled by the true mastermind and main cause of the war, Blackbeard. His plan was that he knew Whitebeard would risk anything to save a single of his crew, and the WG would do anything to take him down. While everyone is focusing on Marine HQ, Blackbeard slips into Impel Down, recruits the strongest prisoners of Level Six, which contains some of the worst criminals in the history of the world, sails back, kills Whitebeard, steals Whitebeard's destructive powers for his own means, and then makes a clean escape.
  • Trafalgar Law (of all people), thinks he's this to Luffy. You would think that manipulating the Straw Hats would be a piece of cake thanks to their captain's unassuming nature. Unfortunately for Law, he didn't account for the antics or Luffy's "I do whatever the hell I want" attitude, and it becomes increasingly obvious to him and the audience that he was never in control of the alliance, especially when Luffy admits that his plan to take down Kaido works towards Luffy's goal of taking down all of the Four Emperors, and that he's using Law's plan for that goal.
  • Shogun of Wano, Kurozumi Orochi never once thought that Kaido would ever betray him and that the two were equals, ignorant that Kaido hated him and was using him for his own plans (otherwise, a weakling and conniving snake like Orochi would not have become Shogun in the first place). Thus, when Kaido announces his plans to turn Wano into a "New Onigashima", Orochi protests, only to be beheaded in the spot.
• Peach Girl: Toji and most of the Spear Carriers in the first arc, and Gigoro in the second. Of special note is Gigoro's actions in "The Destruction of Pure Love"; he starts to realize that Sae's account of Momo isn't entirely accurate, so he tries to get Momo's side of the story... by chasing her through the warehouse district, not saying anything less stalker-y than "I need to talk to you."
• Alain from Pokémon the Series: XY is this to Team Flare, until his breaking upon learning the team's true intentions when Ash gets captured, during the Team Flare Arc.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Poor Homura. So you wanted to save your friend from certain death using your Faust powered wish? Well you did technically save her by making it so as long she is not saved, the timeline repeat itself. Unfortunately, you also helped Kyuubey create what is the ultimate power source based on people suffering since Madoka is not only a juicy power source but since with every cycle Homura becomes more cynical, her suffering only gives even more power with each interval. And she can do nothing to get out of the loop.
  • Really, ALL magical girls are this, since Kyubey tricks them into a Magically-Binding Contract that will result in either thier death or transformation into a witch.
  • Homura gets this even worse in Rebellion, wherein she is turned into an "unborn" witch by Kyubey, then used to trap Madoka and the others inside her barrier.
• Makoto Isshiki in RahXephon. He takes down Tokyo Jupiter, but all he achieves by doing so is enabling the Mulians to invade the outside world en masse.
• In Rebuild World, Alpha promises to let Akira sell the relic she's after for a huge amount of cash. But it becomes increasingly clear over the course of the story that she has big plans for this relic and gets him to thoughtlessly agree to parts of her contract to give herself more sway over him. Later subverted when Akira points out to someone who tries to turn him against Alpha, a long list of Manipulative Bitch things she's done to him, some of which haven't been pointed out in the narrative before. Akira says that he serves her because I Gave My Word and I Owe You My Life.
• In The Seven Deadly Sins, the entire Holy Knights order (especially Jericho and Vivian) were being used by Hendrickson, who himself was being used by Dreyfus, in order to awake the Demon Clan, the remaining Ten Commandments, and reignite the holy war.
• Maka ends up one of these in Soul Eater, when convinced by Medusa that the witch truly cares about her child (a reaction very heavily hinted to be down to her relationship with her father). She is used to defeat Arachne, which in turn gives Medusa's soul a new body to inhabit, while demonstrating to the witch that Maka has sufficient power to be a serious threat to witches. Medusa then tries, but fails, to kill Maka due to the timely appearance of Chekhov's Gunman. Needless to say the Manipulative Bastard made another attempt.
• Almost the entire cast to Head in Star Driver.
• Lavinia Reberth of Str.A.In.: Strategic Armored Infantry is a Fangirl of epic proportions, who'd do anything to get some of Sara's attention. Dress up as a Playboy Bunny? Failed. Ambush her in the shower? Got the wrong girl. Steal her most precious possession? Dropped it in a garbage dump, which ended up with Sara's true identity revealed to the whole crew, the Libertad kicked out of port before it could complete repairs, and one of their teammates dead. Oops.
• In Tokyo Ghoul:Re, it turns out that the entire CCG has been this all along. Not only has the Washuu Clan been conspiring with a ghoul organization all along, but they are themselves secretly a family of ghouls. The Knight Templars and sadistic ghoul-haters of the organization have been fighting and dying on the orders of ghouls all along. All to maintain an endless conflict between the two species, and keep these two groups in power.
• Toriko: The entire conflict between the good guys (IGO) and the original bad guys (Gourmet corp) was controlled by the until-then unknown NEO organization. Tons of different characters (including Midora, both in his youth and in the present) were manipulated by Acacia and the Blue Nitro.
• Transformers: Armada: Almost every major non-human character takes a turn being one of these, as would be expected when The Mole happens to be a Manipulative Bastard.
• Who in Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- isn't playing into Fei Wong Reed's plans, again? Kurogane might be the least manipulated of the group, but he's not exactly immune, either. He is the (positive kind of) pawn of Ichihara Yuuko, though and thus serves as the counterpart to poor Fai.
• Variable Geo: This applies equally to the entrants of the VG tournament, regardless whether it's for the grand prize, the desire to compete, or to settle grudges against other participants. In the end, they're all being used as unwitting test subjects, by The Jahana Group, who secretly monitor the tournament to determine which of them will make the ideal host body for Miranda's disembodied spirit.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!: Zorc manipulated Akhenaden into translating the spells that would create the Millennium Items, the plan being all along that the Items would revive Zorc.
  • Near the end of the first season of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, Sho assumes that everybody in Duel Academy were the pawns of Kagemaru, the season's Big Bad.
  • In the second season of Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL, this is the standard MO of the Barians (especially Gilag); they brainwash one or more duelists, then give them a powerful Spell Card called "Rank-Up Magic — Barian's Force" which can be used to summon powerful monsters called "Chaos Xyzs", which they also provide. This plan never worked (and in Gilag's case, almost got him killed when it went wrong), and it took a long time for it to sink in that they should try something different. (But in their defense, eventually they did.) Except Vector who masqueraded as a student named "Rei Shingetsu" and played Yuma like a fiddle. Giving him some card (Number 66 to lure him and several V cards and Rank Up Magic -- Limited Barian's Force to use against him with Vain -- Sneer of Betrayal).

Comic Books

• In IDW Publishing's Beast Wars comics, the Predacon Shokaract believes that he is the mastermind of a plot to elevate himself to godhood. He has no idea that his lieutenants are worshippers of Unicron, the Transformer God of Evil, and are manipulating him to bring about their master’s return.
• DIE: Sol and the various writers who became the Masters were ultimately all pawns of Die itself, which reached through time to manipulate them all into creating the archetypes and game which led to its creation.
• When Doctor Octopus reformed the Sinister Six in the six-part story "Return of the Sinister Six", he used the other five members this way. He told them that his plan was to launch a satellite armed with a deadly poison, and then blackmail the world into making them its rulers lest they use it. This was a lie. The "poison" was something used to prevent people from using cocaine, and he planned to blackmail cartels and everyone else who benefitted from the drug trade, gaining incredible influence in the underworld on an international level — alone.
• In Green Lantern story Sinestro Corps War, the Guardians and the Green Lantern Corps turn out to be these after Sinestro reveals that he (Sinestro) won the war by making the Guardians override their own principles and disable the "no killing" function on the Lantern rings.
• Hound: Queen Maeve doesn't realise that she's being used as a pawn by Morrigan—who masquerades at her court of Connact as her Fomorian advisor, Calatin.
• In The Multiversity, a number of characters unknowingly further The Gentry's invasion.
  • Ultra Comics #1: Ultra Comics itself acts as vector of contagion to The Gentry in different worlds (including ours).
• One of the more hated aspects of The Punisher: Purgatory was the retcon that Frank Costa was really a demon named Olivier put into the body of a stillborn baby and that he orchestrated the events that caused Frank Castle to become the Punisher so Castle could be one of these for him, building an army of those Castle killed.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
  • Mina Mongoose was this to Ixis Naugus — he used her musical protests against NICOLE as a conduit for his magic, inflaming the public's distrust of NICOLE into paranoia and hatred, beginning a series of events that leads to Naugus being appointed king of New Mobotropolis.
  • Geoffrey St. John. It was pretty obvious that Naugus was taking advantage of the then recent death of Geoffrey's father Ian St. John to get the poor kid to help him. Any doubts were dropped when Naugus possessed Geoffrey to escape his mutations.
• Superman:
  • In the H'el on Earth arc, H'El seduced Supergirl and talked her into helping him bring Krypton back, assuring that no Earthmen would suffer. She joined him... until she found out that his plan involved blowing the Sun up and destroying Earth. Then she turned on him right away.
  • In Elseworld's Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl, Supergirl and the whole Justice Society were Lex Luthor's pawns, who was using them to increase his power, popularity and fortune.
  • Subverted in Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade when Linda needs to leave classroom and pretends she is being abducted by an invisible superhero and she is "just an unwitting pawn in a larger game". Played straight with Belinda Zee, who has no idea that she's Mr. Mxyzptlk's pawn.
  • In Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man, Doctor Octopus to Lex Luthor. Lex tricked Doc Ock into helping him destroy Superman. He pretended it was a partnership between equals, but Ock was kind of Lex's hired muscle, and Lex planned to betray Otto all along.
  • Subverted in The Coming of Atlas. Sam Lane goads Atlas into fighting Superman to study the Kryptonian's hero's capabilities. However, Atlas makes clear he knows Lane is using him with the intent of destroying him as soon as he has outlived his usefulness, but he is playing along for the time being.
  • Strangers at the Heart's Core: Most of villains fought by Kara throughout the story -Shyla Kor-Onn, the Visitors, Klax-Ar, Gravitron Man, Gravity Lord- were all unknowingly telepathically influenced by Lesla-Lar into attacking Supergirl.
  • In Superman vs. Shazam!, Superman and Captain Marvel are fooled into fighting each other by the Big Bad so they cannot interfere with his master plan. It is invoked by old wizard Shazam! when he explains the situation to both heroes.
    Wizard Shazam: Only by engaging in mortal combat could you regain your sanity... For you have been unwitting pawns in a vicious plan!
  • In Starfire's Revenge, the titular villain's soldiers are fooled into thinking they are helping a revolutionary leader change an unfair society for the better, when they are just making a self-serving, power-hungry upstart richer and more powerful.
  • In The Hunt for Reactron, Guardian, Perseus Hazard, the squads of Metropolis Science Police... are fooled into believing they are hunting dangerous terrorists by General Sam Lane, who has framed Supergirl, Nightwing and Flamebird and now seeks to destroy them. Hazard only realizes that they are being manipulated, and Lane foisted Reactron on him to not leave loose ends, shortly before Reactron burns him and his squad to ashes.
  • In Escape from the Phantom Zone, villain Xa-Du convinces young psychic Gayle Marsh that he can fix her mental issues if she goes into the Phantom Zone. Gayle manipulates Supergirl into coming to her, uses her body as a beacon signal to find the Zone, and finds out that Xa-Du's real goal is to use her inborn power to break out of his dimensional prison and cause mayhem in the physical world.
  • In The Plague of the Antibiotic Man, Amalak uses his alien pet Jevik to spread a plague across Central City, and then attack Superman. Jevik is a barely sapient beast who only does what he is told, so he does not know or understand his owner intends him to be killed by Superman in order to break the Man of Steel's spirit.
  • The Other Side of Doomsday: Villain T.O. Morrow uses a staff to control a living planet, and there is no indication that his slave is aware of or willing to harm the heroes.
  • The Unknown Legionnaire: Villain Norm Eldor tricks the Proteans into protecting him from the Legion and giving him a super-weapon by claiming he is a descendant of the Llorn -another alien race which befriended the Proteans in the long past- who is searching for his ancestors' old technology in order to protect the Protean world from their enemies.
  • Superman and Spider-Man: Doctor Doom uses a screeching micro-drone to lead Hulk towards Metropolis and starts tearing the city up. Naturally, Hulk knows nothing about Doom or the drone, and he does not even notice his mad rampage has allowed the Parasite to break out of containment (which is exactly what Doom wanted).
• Ultimate Marvel:
  • The Ultimates: The Liberators and their backers are motivated by rejection of the American foreign policies, and intended to "Liberate" the US from what they saw as an evil government. They were manipuled by Loki, who organized all this to screw his brother Thor, member of the Ultimates, just for kicks.
  • Ultimatum: Doctor Doom arranged the events of Ultimates 3 to make Magneto go into an even more radical attempt to cause worldwide destruction. It worked. It worked too well.
• Watchmen: Dr. Manhattan and to a lesser degree all the other main characters become suckers for Ozymandias.
• Wonder Woman (1987): When Artemis won The Contest and became the new Wonder Woman she was approached by agents of the White Magician as very quickly after she arrived in America, who ensured that her "heroics" were either completely ineffective affairs with paid "actors" as the villains or things which outright helped the White Magician and his extensive black market superweapon deals.
• Laff-A-Lympics: In "The Purple Pig Puzzle," a rich gambler named Lucky Starr won the money that the Laff-A-Lympics event raised for charity. Starr gives the teams the chance to win it back by locating a ceramic purple pig. The teams are given clues as to the pig's whereabouts, but Starr, who has wagered a bundle on the Really Rottens to find it first, hedges his bet by having his minions make sure the Rottens get the clues first. (They do but they're so dense they can't piece the clues together.)

Fan Works

Crossovers

• Avenger Goddess: Over the course of the flashback/World War II arc, it becomes rapidly apparent (and is eventually outright confirmed in Chapter 23) that for all his delusions of grandeur, the Red Skull is just Ares' puppet in his plans to test and corrupt Diana.
• The Bridge:
  • The Big Bad brings King Sombra Back from the Dead, and sets him to try and retake control of the Crystal Empire, which somehow furthers the Big Bad's own plans. For his part, Sombra doesn't know how he's alive, and doesn't particularly care.
  • Later, the Windigos use Sci-Twi and Wallflower Blush as their pawns to destroy the human world by lying to them about being benevolent spirits trying to save their world from destruction.
• Children of an Elder God:
  • Megumi Kunzama is a reporter that believes she’s getting the scoop on NERV. In reality, Gendo and Fuyutsuki are using her, leaking harmless or false information to her. And she’s no idea.
  • All Children are Gendo and Yui's unwitting pawns, since they're using the pilots to fight the Great Old Ones and the Outer Gods and steal their powers in order to carry their plans forward.
• The Equestrian Wind Mage: Season 2 focuses on the heroes waging war with Ganondorf, who's trying to take control of Equestria. However, unknown to any of them (even Ganon himself) until late in the game, he was released in Equestria by the true villains, the Church of Majora, to serve as a diversion from their own plans for Equestria.
• Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail: Trip brings up this trope in regards to making sure Goh never finds out about the Infinity Train. Specifically, he points out Goh's tendency to fixate on things (such as Pokémon, Mew and Ash), expressing the concern that if he becomes obsessed with finding the Train, he'll wind up trying to board it the way Chloe did.
• Last Child of Krypton: Shinji was meant to be Gendo’s unsuspecting puppet, but his inability to synch with an Evangelion prevented this. The remaining characters were the paws of Gendo and SEELE until Kaji blew the lid off their little conspiracy.
• Mare of Steel: Brainiac allies with Steel Wing, supposedly to help him capture and destroy Rainbow Dash/Supermare. However, Brainiac was only using him to study Supermare's strengths and weaknesses for his own purposes, ultimately declaring Steel Wing a liability and throwing him under the bus to the Princesses while wiping his memory of Brainiac.
• Percy Jackson: Spirits: Vaatu apparently manipulated Sozin into starting the War and wiping out the airbenders to eliminate their spiritual traditions and keep them from performing the rituals that kept the sky cleansed of his influence, Zhao into using Wan Shi Tong's knowledge to help kill Tui and cause the other spirit to withdraw from the human world with his library and the contained knowledge, and maybe even Amon into trying to eliminate bending so that the world would be less able to defend itself against him.
• The Stars Will Aid Their Escape: The entire cast — from Trixie (whom he himself drove insane) to the Princesses themselves — end up manipulated by Herald as part of his plan to bring about the summoning of the Outer Gods.
• Thousand Shinji:
  • Subverted. Gendo and SEELE turned everyone into their unwitting pawns… but Shinji and the other Children realized that they were being manipulated, and in turn they used Gendo.
  • It was played straight, too. Unbeknown to Gendo and SEELE, they were the puppets of the Warhammer 4000 Gods, who were using them to create new gods.
• The Warmistress of Equestria: The Traitor Legions trick rogue griffon General Blackwing into an alliance, and aiding in setting up a False Flag Operation to start a war between Equestria and the griffons in order to further the Traitor Legionnaires' goal of destroying Celestia. Meanwhile, within the Traitor Legionnaires' alliance, Lord Talon Hoof thinks that he's the supreme leader, but is being manipulated by Scorpan as part of his plan to empower and release his master Tirac from the Warp.

Danganronpa

• or did it eat the little girl?: During the final trial, Kokichi realizes that while they'd thought they were defying all expectations, they were actually playing right into The Director's hands and playing their role to the hilt.

The DCU

• In A Force of Four, Wonder Woman's old enemy Badra frees three Kryptonian criminals emprisoned by Superman and strikes up an alliance with them to destroy their enemies and then Earth. The trio believe they are equal partners until it's revealed Mars is Badra's real boss and the god was using them to further his goals.

Digimon

• The Digimon Emperor Ken from Zero 2: A Revision ends up being manipulated by the three independent villains to benefit their own plans for world domination.
  • Devimon uses his Black Gears to manipulate Ken into constructing Chimeramon using the components of himself as well as the Digidestined's Digimons in order to use the Chimera to relocate him into the Digital World.
  • Demon manipulates Ken into becoming the Digimon Emperor by preaching a "statement" about order and chaos and gave a Dark Spore to Ken in hopes that the corruption factor will return Demon back to his former strength and amplify his own dark powers.
  • Myotismon manipulates Ken into constructing the Control Spires in order to weaken the barrier between the Digital World and the Digital Limbo in order to regain the rest of his data that is still trapped in the Limbo.

Godzilla

• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): This Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) fanfiction indicates that Alan Jonah becomes the kind who helps on accident rather than being actively manipulated, by selling biological samples of Ghidorah's tissue from San's old head on to other parties on the Titan DNA market. It's later hinted that Bio-Major (one of Jonah's customers) in particular are unknowingly aiding Ghidorah's long-term plans by using Ghidorah's DNA in new fertility treatments.

Harry Potter

• The Parselmouth of Gryffindor: Cornelius Fudge is ridiculously easy to manipulate, be it by Dolores Umbridge, Lucius Malfoy or someone else. He's actually a good guy at heart, but only avoids causing a world catastrophe because Hermione (who has come to control him most usually, and, therefore rule Magical Britain from the shadows) keeps a tight leash on him.
• Destiny Intertwined: Vitreus is informed that he was one of these by his father after Hayze's "trial". While he was told to keep an eye on Hayze because his family thought Hayze was dangerous, it turns out afterwards that the Frostspears didn't really care whether Hayze was dangerous or not, and were just looking for an excuse to discredit Lynerius and his clan, something that badly affects Vitreus's trust and confidence in his family.

Love Hina

• Entering The Love Hina World: Naru becomes one for Masako and RubyCorp. She's so intent on getting revenge on everyone who's "wronged her" by calling her out on her selfish behavior that she fails to see that her "allies" are planning to demolish the Hinata Inn in order to make way for their property expansion project. All Masako has to do is claim that she'll have the manager replaced with a woman for Naru to fall hook, line and sinker.
• For His Own Sake:
  • Granny Hina merrily used Keitaro as one, right up until he decided enough was enough and left the Hinata Inn.
  • Mutsumi winds up as one to Kagura and Chisato; while she believes they support her quest to get Naru and Keitaro back together, they have much nastier designs on the latter.

Marvel Universe

• FIRE! (DarkMark): Played straight with every villain recruited by Firebrand... and subverted with Doctor Doom who, when contacted, sees through his words and refuses to become a tool.
  "The answer is no."
  "But, your excellency—"
  "NO. Doom does not conspire. Doom is not used. Doom uses! This conversation is ended." He stabbed a button on his console that would not only break the contact, but prevent further contact from being made.
  The gall. The insufferable, common-man gall of the representative. To think that he himself, Doctor Doom, would possibly—could possibly—be induced to participatory activity with a too-large band of costumed inferiors in a disruptory mission of ill-defined intent.

Mass Effect

• In The Council Era, Krogan Overlord Tikrog Kurvok unknowingly becomes a pawn in his advisor Halak Marr's plot to start the Krogan Rebellions and turn the Krogan into a Master Race.
• Mass Effect 2 AU Lanius: No matter what the player learns about the true nature of Cerberus and what they're up to, Shepard never finds out. What's worse, bt the time Mass Effect 3 rolls around, Shepard has been indoctrinated by the Reapers without realizing it.
• Mass Effect: The Iron Heart of Man makes this one of the favorite tactics of the Asari matriarchs. However, this works against them when they set up a Batman Gambit to manipulate the Quarians in this fashion, only for the Quarians to not do as they expected — and, in the process, discover and make first contact with humanity.

Miraculous Ladybug

• BURN THE WITCH:
  • Lila Rossi treats all of her 'friends' as such. When Rose/Witch Hunter tearfully declares that she just wanted to be friends, Lila insists that they were — because in her mind, friend is just a fancy word for people who can do things for you.
  • When Hawkmoth informs her that her services are no longer required, he twists the knife by sadistically calling her "Friend," causing her to realize that he played her the exact same way that she's manipulated countless others.
• Dad Villain AU: Emelie sees absolutely nothing wrong with using the Peacock Pin freely, despite how the magical jewelry is clearly broken; after all, she hasn't suffered any ill effects for it! What she doesn't realize is that this is because her husband made a Wish that redirects the magical backlash onto other people — specifically targeting Ladybug and her loved ones out of sheer spitefulness. He is perfectly happy to let his wife unwittingly hurt others, turning her into a vehicle for his petty revenge.
• The Karma of Lies:
  • Lila pretends to be this after Gabriel is exposed as Hawkmoth, spinning a sob story about how he got her into modeling in order to discreetly pump her for information about her classmates, using her to gauge their emotional states and determine who might be most vulnerable to akumatization. She takes this a step further by pretending that Adrien was in on it, acting unaware of the possibility that her 'beloved boyfriend' could have been involved even while planting the seeds of suspicion in her mother and Officer Roger's minds.
  • Adrien, meanwhile, is a straight example. Lila convinces him that she's remorseful about her past manipulations, getting him to agree to help her out in exchange for coming clean to their classmates. Not only is she setting him up as a scapegoat the whole time, she further exploits his trust by memorizing the password to the Agrestes' emergency fund account.
• Leave for Mendeleiev: Mme. Bustier serves as one for Chloé due to being a Horrible Judge of Character who desperately wants to believe that the resident bully just needs to be surrounded by 'good examples' — as in students who follow her Extreme Doormat teachings. Thus, when Chloé claims that she just can't focus as well without Marinette (her favorite target) around, Bustier starts badgering her to consider transferring back into the same class as her tormentor, or to consider mentoring her.
• Truth and Consequences:
  • After making a deal with Hawkmoth, Ladybug manipulates Team Miraculous into helping her try to get her hands on the Black Cat Ring. Downplayed to some extent with Alya, Nino and Chloé, as they suspect that something's amiss, but Luka plays this straight.
  • Hawkmoth also turns Luka into one when he becomes Mayura. Unbeknownst to them, Hawkmoth is able to see through their eyes, enabling him to figure out the secret identities of most of Paris' heroes by the climax.
• Villain Of Your Own Story: The Alya who became Hawkmoth in the alternate reality serves as one to Adrien. While she thinks Adrien's helping her out as she pretends to be a supervillain in order to lure other Miraculous Holders out of hiding, he's actually using her to get revenge upon their classmates for how their testimony led to Chloé winding up in juvie.
• In Weight Off Your Shoulder, Alya and most of the Girl Posse grow worried that the new Ladybug might be manipulating Marinette in some way. The truth of the matter is that Future!Alix is the one manipulating all of them, trying to Make Wrong What Once Went Right so she can keep abusing the Rabbit Pocketwatch.
• What Goes Around Comes Around:
  • Lila happily accepts Gabriel's suggestion that she invite all of her classmates (minus Marinette) to an exclusive party his company is holding in Versailles, especially since he asks her to pass it off as completely her idea. What she doesn't know is that Gabriel has recently discovered Ladybug's Secret Identity, and is using her to ensure that Marinette is isolated while he launches his final assault.
  • Thanks to his Delusions of Parental Love, Adrien is easily manipulated by his mother into giving her the Black Cat Ring.
  • While Nathalie was further in the love than Chloé or Lila, she still wasn't aware of just how far her bosses intended to go. She also didn't know that she wasn't the original Nathalie, being a sentimonster created to replace the real one after she learned too much — something the police take considerable pleasure in revealing to her.

My Hero Academia

• Erased Potential: Principal Nedzu repeatedly manipulates Toshinori to his own ends; he points him towards Izuku as a potential successor for One For All despite knowing that Izuku is aiming to become a Quirkless Pro Hero, then uses Toshinori to reveal to the other students that Izuku is a sponsored student. Eventually, this spurs Toshinori to join in on Aizawa and Hizashi's threat to quit U.A. Aizawa also revolves to get Toshinori in the loop so that he can't be tricked as easily anymore.
• Mastermind: Rise of Anarchy: Katsuki's destructive search for personal catharsis after the events of Strategist For Hire plays right into the hands of Principal Nedzu. He becomes the violent vigilante 'King', taking out his frustrations on petty criminals; unbeknownest to him, Nedzu is fully aware of his nightly activities, and allows him to continue purely so that he can set Ochako against him, as part of his grander scheme to build Ochako up into the next Symbol of Peace.
• One for All and Eight for the Ninth has All for One having placed a tracking device in Aoyama's belt so it will tell him where the U.A. students are, entirely without its owner's knowledge.
• The Scorpion Jar revolves around Izuku taking advantage of how petty, self-serving and back-biting his bullies at Aldera are by manipulating them into selling each other out for their own gain. He then submits all the evidence they've gathered of their peers' various misdeeds to the Board of Education, prompting a massive investigation.
• Think Before You Speak: Aizawa exploits Tensei's Big Brother Instinct by falsely claiming that Izuku was responsible for Tenya being injured during a training exercise. He does this with the intent of having Tensei spread that Malicious Slander to the media, destroying the innocent student's reputation by having him Convicted by Public Opinion. Tensei is aghast when he learns the truth, though the backlash hit both of them rather than Aizawa's intended target.
• What it Means to Be a Hero:
  • After Endeavor suffers an embarrassing defeat at the hands of Re-Destro, All For One suggests taking advantage of the situation and turning him into one of their tools. Later on, during the Tokyo Invasion arc, they make their move, hitting him with a dose of Trigger to unleash the full force of his flames before revealing his darkest secrets to all of Japan. This heavily undermines the public's trust in Heroes.
  • Nezu muses that this may be the real reason that Sir Nighteye gave Mirio an internship, and why he's so invested in setting him up as All Might's successor: not for "the greater good" as he claims, but because having the new Symbol of Peace as his apprentice would boost his agency's profile and image.

Naruto

• Son of the Sannin does this in a particularly cathartic way to Danzo, of all people. During several arcs, he sabotages and undermines Konoha's efforts to protect the jinchuuriki by leaking intel to the Akatsuki, arrogantly believing that he can exploit the situation by letting the Akatsuki gather all the Tailed Beasts together, then swoop in and seize the lot in Konoha's name. Come Chapter 90, it's revealed that Obito Uchiha planted that idea in his head using Kotomatsukami years ago, as a way of monitoring Orochimaru while sabotaging Konoha from the inside out. To cap it off, Obito planted a mental trigger to make Danzo completely obedient, using it to retrieve one of Pain's Rinnegan eyes before ordering him to commit suicide via Reverse Tetragram Sealing once he's done with him.

Neon Genesis Evangelion

• Shinji and Asuka figuring out that they're unwitting pawns is an important subplot in Advice and Trust. When they open up to each other and start talking about their childhoods and their piloting experiences, they figure out that Gendo and SEELE are keeping things from them and realize that they're being used to further some kind of sinister scheme. They even managed to completely ruin Gendo's plan by befriending Rei, before they even realized that he had a plan. And he's none the wiser.
• Evangelion 303: Although Gendo seems to be less abusive than his canon self, he keeps a secret agenda and he’s using everyone –including his son and his son’s fiancée- to carry it out.
• In Neon Genesis Evangelion: Genocide, Misato and all pilots are unwitting pawns to Gendo to test a computer program known as the Emerald Tablet and destroy SEELE. When Misato finds out about it, she decides to turn on NERV.
• Once More with Feeling subverted this. NERV's staff is Gendo's unwitting pawns, and the UN is SEELE's one. However, Shinji pretends to be also clueless, although he knows what they're exactly planning, and he warned the Japanese Government via Kaji.
• The Second Try:
  • Subverted. Gendo and SEELE believe that everyone are their pawns… but due to time-travel shenanigans, Shinji and Asuka know exactly what they intend to do and later they tell Misato.
  • From a certain point of view, Shinji and Asuka are reluctantly using everybody in NERV as their pawns to avert the end of the world.

Persona

• Wanted It To Be A Game: In this Role Swap AU, Seito manipulates Kou Ichijou into believing that the TV World is actually a safe place, so that they'll put people in there in hopes of protecting them.

Rosario + Vampire

• Rosario Vampire: Brightest Darkness Act III:
  • During the course of the fic, Kuyou attacks Yokai Academy with the intent to get revenge on Tsukune for his previous defeat. It's ultimately revealed that Hokuto personally manipulated Kuyou into doing so by exploiting his hatred of Tsukune, using the resulting chaos as a distraction so he could break into the secured levels of the academy and steal an Artifact of Doom for use in his Evil Plan. Hokuto gets what he wanted, and Kuyou is Killed Off for Real by Tsukune.
  • As revealed near the end of the act, Akua and Kahlua aided Kiria in his plan to rewrite history with the Chrono Displacement spell, intending to give their father Issa a top spot in the new world once humanity is subjugated. In the final chapter, it's revealed that Kiria's plan would ensure that he would be the sole dark lord, and part of said plan would have Akua and Kahlua, and possibly Moka and Kokoa as well, infected with Blackheart and then sent back in time to kill Issa and destroy his empire from within, thus ensuring that Kiria would rule unopposed. The two promptly switch sides and spend the next act trying to atone for their mistake.

RWBY

• Can One Change Fix All of RWBY?: After the Fall of Beacon, the bad guys have all the kingdoms' leaders and most of the huntsmen and huntresses in their pockets. They've manipulated Team CFVY, Team JNR and Penny Polendina against the heroes. The only reason why the bad guys haven't already won and destroyed Remnant is because the Relics in this iteration have been heavily-guarded behind deadly magic trials since they were first sent into the world.

A Song of Ice and Fire

• Asshai's Flames has Senira, who unknowingly helps her mother's plan, which more or less applies to the whole monastery too. She realizes this in the end and kills Selye when Asshai falls, which means her own death as well.

Spongebob Squarepants

• A Dash of Logic: Both "Truth or Square" and "Plankton's Regular" show that Mr. Krabs is allowing his feud with Plankton to continue purely for the sake of free marketing. Because having the town's most infamous villains constantly trying to steal the (nonexistent) Krabby Patty formula only further boosts the mystique and fame of Krabs' lucrative burger brand.

Films — Animation

• The Bad Guys (2022): The gang as a whole are revealed to be this at the end of the second act, when they're arrested for a crime they didn't commit. Professor Marmalade, who had been in charge of rehabilitating them, was really planning a master heist and setting up the Bad Guys to take the fall. Mr. Wolf got the worst of the manipulation, starting with saving the "old lady" at the museum, which Marmalade gleefully rubs in his face.
• Frozen (2013): Prince Hans dupes Anna by faking his romance with her so she could unwittingly hand over Arendelle to him on a silver platter after "staging a little accident" for Elsa.
• The Little Mermaid:
  • In The Little Mermaid (1989), Ariel was completely unaware that Ursula was using her as a pawn to become the ruler of Atlantica. As quoted by the 2004 Disney Princess storybook:
  Ursula: It's not you I'm after. You're merely the bait to catch your father.
  • In The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea, Melody becomes an unwitting pawn as part of Morgana's plot to use King Triton's trident to control the seas at her command.
• The Princess and the Frog:
  • Naveen doesn't realize that Facilier and Lawrence were only using him to trick Charlotte into marrying Lawrence (disguised as Naveen) to get all Charlotte's money until the near end of the movie.
  • Lawrence also qualifies. He likely doesn't even know that Facilier's endgame is to sacrifice a good part of the city to his Loa patrons. On top of that it's implied Facilier was not going to hold up his own end of their deal and take all the fortune for himself or at the very least take the majority of the money for himself.
• In Turning Red, Ming believes the Love Interest of the character Siu-Jyu in the Jade Palace Diaries is an unwitting pawn.
  Ming: She's just using him to get to the throne.
• Everyone in Sugar Rush in Wreck-It Ralph is an unwitting pawn to King Candy (in reality Turbo in diguise).
• In Zootopia, Judy Hopps was manipulated by the Big Bad Bellwether for most of the movie before catching on pre-climax.

Films — Live-Action

• In AM1200, Sam Larson becomes aware that he is an unwitting pawn to a cosmic entity lurking within a mysterious radio station.
• Michael in Arlington Road is trying to avoid a terrorist attack. What he doesn't realize is that he's being played and his actions ultimately lead to the bombing of the FBI Headquarters.
• Assassin's Creed (2016): Cal Lynch is used by the Templars-backed Abstergo Foundation to find the location of the Eden Apple of Granada by exploring the life of Aguilar in 1491. Sophie makes for an unusual Templar in that she wants Cal to be witting and therefore willing to help them. He makes up for it by stealing the Apple back from her father, after killing him.
• Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice: Batman ends up this to Lex Luthor, who exploits his jaded and violent vigilantism and the existing fears of Superman to manipulate Bats into trying to kill Supes. And it almost works.
• Subverted in Blade II. The Evil Overlord's Affably Evil daughter mocks the eponymous protagonist for agreeing to a meeting with his enemies too easily, but quickly shuts her trap when its revealed he was prepared to kill them all with a LOT of carry-on explosives at the first sign of treachery. Later in the movie, when The Mole reveals himself and gloats at the heroes' gullibility, Blade corrects him by stating that he knew of his duplicity from the beginning, a fact he illustrates in explosive fashion.
• Robert the Bruce becomes this at the end of Braveheart, when his father uses him to lure the hero William Wallace into a trap.
• Subverted in Collateral Damage. The protagonist very nearly succeeds in helping the terrorists' Evil Plan come to fruition, but luckily becomes wise to his true situation just in time to foil it.
• In The Dark Knight, most characters involved in the Joker's plots played right into his hands when they thought they were about to stop him. Even Batman, who had never faced a criminal like him before, is his pawn through much of the film.
• Diamonds Are Forever:
  • Blofeld kidnaps Willard Whyte and uses his industrial empire to build and launch a Kill Sat. Only one other person in Whyte's organization knows what's going on: the rest are kept ignorant.
  • A rocket scientist helped Blofeld to build the Kill Sat because he thought Blofeld would use it to help achieve world peace. Of course, this wasn't the case.
• In Die Hard, it's the police and the FBI. They face a major "terrorist" attack with standard procedures, unaware that Hans Gruber knows all about them and his Evil Plan depends on them operating in that matter so he can manipulate them into helping him open a super secure vault and then cover his escape.
• In Equilibrium, John Preston turns over the entire leadership of La Résistance for a chance to see the Big Bad face to face and assassinate him. Except DuPont knew about this plan all along and arrested Preston as well. DuPont would have succeeded, except he took the time to gloat before killing Preston, triggering Preston's Unstoppable Rage.
• Christopher Nolan's first film, Following has two levels of Unwitting Pawns. A house burglar and a blonde femme fatale sucker a floundering writer into framing himself for the burglar's murder charge. Then we learn that the burglar is actually working for a gangster who the blonde is blackmailing, and he was setting the writer up for her murder.
• Frank Pentangeli in The Godfather Part II. He's caught in Michael's war with Hyman Roth and is callously played by both sides. Michael encourages him to meet with the Rosatos to ascertain Roth's guilt in an assassination attempt. In turn, the Rosatos try to kill Pentangeli and pin it on Michael. Pentageli survives and informs against Michael to the FBI. Michael intimidates Pentangeli into recanting his testimony and ultimately into committing suicide.
• The Hunger Games: Katniss Everdeen. Present, lampshaded, and part of the symbolism. A mockingjay is a powerful symbol to the rebels, but it's also a bird that can't sing its own songs, relying on what others sing to it.
• Everything that Morpheus does in The Matrix, since The One, The Prophecy, and The Oracle are all further systems of control of the humans by the AI's.
• MonsterVerse:
  • Kong: Skull Island: Both the soldiers and the LANDSAT scientists. Only Randa (and, to a lesser extent, Brooks and possibly San) had any idea what they were walking into, and he deliberately withholds that information until all of Packard's helicopters have been swatted out of the sky and most of their crews and the LANDSAT team are dead. The airdropped seismic charges were intended to flush Kong out (which worked out just great), and also awoke the Skullcrawlers. Brooks even protests before takeoff that they should warn Packard of what's really going on, only to be brushed off by Randa.
  • Godzilla vs. Kong: Monarch (Nathan Lind in particular) and by extension Kong are this to Apex Cybernetics, as during the joint mission to enter the Hollow Earth with Kong, Apex are only using them so the corporation can harvest the Hollow Earth's energy source for themselves and power up Mechagodzilla. Apex in turn, with their sheer hubris, arrogance and stupidity, end up unwittingly bringing the threat of King Ghidorah back, reincarnated in Mechagodzilla, due to Apex integrating a power source they had absolutely no understanding of into the Mecha whilst using Ghidorah's still-telepathic skull as the core of the Mecha's brain, although it's a bit of an Ambiguous Situation whether Apex simply blundered into helping or were being actively manipulated by Ghidorah the entire time (with the novelization providing hints towards both interpretations). Speaking of the novelization, it reveals that Walter Simmons' right hand Ren Serizawa is a Dragon with an Agenda, who would've been in the perfect position to dispose of Simmons and become a Dragon Ascendant if not for Ghidorah possessing Mechagodzilla at that moment.
• In Mortdecai, Charlie spends the first half of the movie as one, unwittingly smuggling the stolen painting to Krampf in his Rolls Royce after Krampf bribes his mechanic, Spinoza, into hiding it there without Charlie's knowledge.
• Philip in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, who rushes back to Syrena as soon as he regains consciousness... and thus rewards Blackbeard with Syrena's tear and gets her tied up to die.
• The Hovitos in Raiders of the Lost Ark are manipulated by Belloq into believing that Indiana is stealing their fertility idol and that Belloq simply wants to protect it for them. They stop Indiana from escaping with the idol and then attempt to kill him, during which time Belloq makes off with the idol.
• Everyone in the Saw movies is like this. The entire franchise is one giant incomprehensible Gambit Roulette, and all the characters are constantly walking right into Jigsaw's plans. Inverted, however, insofar as Jigsaw genuinely wants the suckers to live; he doesn't expect them to make the wrong choice and die but he wants them to make the right choice and live, therefore he doesn't do Evil Plans. His successors and helpers, however, do seem to want everyone to die, and expect them to do dumb things — which they do. All the time.
• Sleepers: Danny Snyder/O'Connor, the official lawyer of Tommy and John, didn't know at first what was going on. From his point of view, King Benny threatens him one day to take on the defense of two of his hitmen in a trial that would usually be a can't-miss case for the prosecutor. He was handed a script with questions for him to ask in court and ordered to play along and put in the effort to be at least a tad competent. As the trial progressed, it's possible he figured out the defending position had help from the inside, but it's never shown nor implied anyone revealed the truth to him.
• Star Wars: Virtually everyone in the Prequel trilogy is played like a fiddle by Palpatine.
  • Mace Windu dies in an attempt first to arrest and then just kill Chancellor Palpatine, which is not only unsuccessful, but also provides Palpatine with ammunition for his claims that the Jedi are revolting against the Republic and SHOT FIRST. In a double irony, he also ends up making The Chosen One, who he himself had doubts about already, switch his allegiance to the man he attempted to "assassinate".
  • In Attack of the Clones, Palpatine asks rhetorically what senator would be brave enough to propose the Republic create an army within earshot of the easily manipulated Jar Jar Binks, currently interim senator of Naboo. Always eager to please, and knowing that Padmé trusts Palpatine, Jar Jar does exactly that.
  • Queen Amidala in The Phantom Menace ends up getting Palpatine into power because Palpatine pretended to be on her side while openly criticizing senator Valorum, causing her to start a vote of no confidence and eventually get Palps elected.
  • The entire Confederacy of Independent Systems are manipulated into declaring independence from the Republic by Dooku, who's working for Palpatine. The goal being to start the Clone Wars and get Palpatine emergency powers.
• In a rare example of a villain being this to the hero, Lex Luthor finds himself being played by Supes himself during the climax of Superman II. Specifically, he believes he had depowered Supes when he had in fact unwittingly depowered General Zod and his co-conspirators.
• It's strongly implied in The Terminator that John Connor deliberately manipulated Kyle Reese into falling in love with his mother by giving him the picture of her. Reese was just allowed to be unaware that his own son was sending him back in time (to his almost certain death) to ensure he could be conceived and grow up to save humanity. It must've been a heartbreaking decision for John.
• In the original Total Recall (1990), Quade is his own unwitting pawn. He had his own memory wiped as part of his cover to infiltrate La Résistance and identify its leader.
• Touch of Evil: Menzies is an honest cop who comes to the disheartening realization that his longtime partner and friend has spent years planting evidence and tricking Menzies into discovering it.
• In Twice Upon A Time, Synonimess Botch tricks our heroes Ralph and Mumford into bringing him the mainspring from the Cosmic Clock, giving him control over time and the chance to cover the land of Din in nightmare bombs as part of his plot to trap the Rushers in waking nightmares.
• Van Helsing: Dr. Frankenstein. He thought Count Dracula was helping him create his Creature because Dracula believed in his work. But once the Monster is brought to life, Dracula reveals he was solely using Victor so he could use the Monster's artificial life to bring his vampiric children to life.
• In Wanted, the main character is played, especially through the charms of the hot chick. Who is played herself, along with everyone in the order. At the end, some of her "colleagues" decide going into business for themselves isn't such a bad idea, but she has the... balls to set things right.
• In White Noise (2005), once John begins experimenting with EVP (a way of listening to/seeing spirits in the beyond) on his own, he starts receiving messages from his late wife, believing them ways to save people. They're really trick visions sent by three very, very malicious spirits so that they can follow him and break into the realm of the living through the door he's opened up. And Anna's constant insistence that he 'Go now!'? Those were visions of when he arrived at the final location the messages showed him, where she was trying to warn him to get away and save himself. "Exactly as planned" indeed.
• Wild Things 2: Maya King, Julian Haynes, Detective Morrison, Niles Dunlap, and possibly even Brittney's mother were all hapless pawns in Brittney's scheme to get rich. Terence initially wasn't a part of the scheme and almost becomes a Spanner in the Works when he tries to blackmail them, but ends up being framed for Maya's murder.
• Wonder Woman (2017): Ludendorff and Doctor Poison are manipulated into creating their gas weapon by Ares, who wants to use it to extend the war indefinitely.
• X-Men Origins: Wolverine:
  • The look on Wolverine's face when Blob told him that Stryker was performing experiments on mutants and when he realizes what led him to willingly get his brand spankin' new adamantium skeleton... priceless.
  • Emma Silverfox becomes Stryker's hostage -> Kayla is forced to work for Stryker -> Kayla faked her death as a part of their plan -> Wolverine accepted Stryker's offer to coat his bones with adamantium to avenge Kayla's 'death' at the hands of Sabretooth.

Literature

• In American Gods Wednesday uses Shadow to start a war between the gods so they can conquer the new gods, when in reality, Wednesday and Loki just want the power they'll gain from a field of dead gods.
• Isaac Asimov:
  • The Naked Sun: Robots cannot be ordered to murder humans, but they can be accessories to murder, simply by ordering them to do highly specific tasks that they can't identify as being directly harmful. This happens with a robot that brings poisoned water to Hans Gruer (although Gruer doesn't die). And then the robot that handed a poisoned arrow to Bik, and the robot whose arm was used to murder Rikaine Delmarre.
  • Foundation Series:
    • "The General (Foundation)": General Bel Riose actually thought he would win and came close, but was inevitably called back to Trantor and executed on grounds of believed disloyalty. The pawn here is Emperor Cleon II, who could've trusted in his subordinate (although historical evidence said that he'd be betrayed sooner or later, and executing overly successful subordinates was the only way to survive).
    • "The Mule": Ebling Mis begins searching for the Second Foundation in order to warn them before the Mule conquers their planet, too. Unfortunately, the Mule is present, calling himself Magnifico. Bayta figures it out early enough to stop Ebling from telling the Mule where they are.
    • Foundation's Edge: Mayor Branno intentionally sends Trevize out to call attention to himself, hopefully acting as a lightning rod to distract the Second Foundation (which is one reason why she sent Compor to follow him in a less-effective ship).
    • Foundation and Earth: Unaware of potential manipulations by R. Daneel Olivaw, the protagonists act as a Macguffin Delivery Service, bringing Fallom to him so that he can survive to see the creation of Galaxia.
• The Belgariad: Errand is brought up to be totally innocent so he can sneak into the Rivan throne room to steal the Orb, without knowing what will happen afterwards. It turns out to be a subversion - Errand, or rather Eriond, is a God in Human Form who doesn't know it, which is why he can touch the Orb unharmed. He's guided by the Light Prophecy, who places him in Zedar's path at exactly the right moment as the start of a very long game.
• Break of Dark: Robert Westall's Short Story, "Fred, Alice and Aunty Lou", includes author Peter Wingfield, who plays into the hands of vengeful ghosts; giving them a conduit to the real world and the energy of his dislike for his old school-mate, Roger.
• The Dale Brown book Act of War has many characters play into National Security Adviser Robert Chamberlain's hands.
  • Shadow Command sees US President Joseph Gardner playing right into the hands of Russian President Leonid Zevitin. The former's egoistic desperation to control the protagonists leads him to steadily feed information that should have stayed classified. Fortunately for Gardner, he does not end up outliving his usefulness.
• In Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle, Angela and Newt Hoenikker are suckered by agents of the American and Russian governments, respectively.
• The Chronicles of Narnia: In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, when the White Witch accidentally stumbles upon Edmund, she subtly goads him into revealing everything about who he is and how he got to Narnia.
• The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen Donaldson. Lord Foul is a Chess Master and Manipulative Bastard extraordinaire, and his plan to destroy the Land involves not just conquering everything, but continually engineering situations where the protagonists become Unwitting Pawns. Thomas Covenant is saddled with the role of Unwitting Pawn for the entire duration of the first and second trilogies, knowing that Lord Foul's plan hinges on the destructive and harmful actions he takes, but helpless to do otherwise because there are no good alternatives.
• Counselors and Kings: Subverted in the last book. Kiva has released her former captor and Evil Mentor Akhlaur from his imprisonment with the intention of manipulating him into destroying The Magocracy of Halruaa and its King Zalathorm for her. Said manipulations across most of the book go off without a hitch. Then Kiva tries to convince Akhlaur to destroy his and Zalathorm's shared Soul Jar so they can fight it out evenly — and he all but laughs in her face. Seems for most of the book, Kiva had been "manipulating" Akhlaur into doing things he wanted to do anyway, but he's not about to put his immortality on the line for anything, even his own revenge and certainly not Kiva's, and he's far too powerful for her to do anything about it; Kiva has to go into a mad scramble to salvage something of her plans that doesn't end with Akhlaur on the throne, and she fails to do so. This, people, is why Evil Is Not a Toy.
• As Malacoda says to Shroud in Dis Acedia:
  A decent puppeteer can manipulate pawns, yes... but a true master pulls strings on string-pullers themselves.
• Discworld: In Thud!, the entire quest Vimes undertakes has been engineered by the very politicians whom he thinks he's going to stop, to give them an excuse to make peace with each other, which is what Vimes wanted all along, except that he's been their unwitting pawn...
  You can't bribe Sam Vimes, but why bother when you can just pull the wool over his eyes?
• Doctrine of Labyrinths: Felix thinks he severed his tie to Malkar years ago, as he continued to climb the Mirador's political ladder. Turns out that Malkar still has enough of a tie to steal Felix's magic for the destruction of the Virtu.
• In Dragonvarld, the Sisterhood of Seth play this role. They think that their efforts are keeping Seth free of dragons, but they're actually only repelling all dragons except the one they unknowingly serve and whose predations the "attacking" dragons are trying to end.
• Spartacus Kilroy in the first Erec Rex book. He thinks he's just trying to help the sick King Piter get better. He doesn't realize that the coffee he's giving the king actually contains the poison keeping him ill.
• Flora Segunda: In Flora's Dare, Flora is sent off by Lord Axacaya to Bilskinir House to recover Georgiana Segunda's Diario so as to determine how to free the Loliga. Little does she suspect that his primary reason for sending her was to confirm his suspicions that she's the last Hadraada, and thus have her killed.
• Goblins in the Castle: Ishmael^note Don't call him that! is eventually revealed to have tricked Igor into betraying the goblins, whom he thought of as friends, by having him be the one to invite them into a trap. This nearly gets Igor killed by the goblins after they're freed, but it's called off after the truth comes out.
• In Hunger, the second book of the Gone series, the Gaiaphage does this to Caine and Lana. Caine thinks he's messing with the nuclear power plant for revenge and power, and Lana thinks she's actually trying to destroy the Gaiaphage. It may also be doing this to Brittney in book 3. Drake is corrupt enough that he actually works for it willingly.
• King James in Harald, who makes war on his father's allies on the advice of his Evil Chancellor, who is in the pay of the real Big Bad.
• Harry Potter:
  • In the words of the fake Mad-Eye Moody in Goblet of Fire, after having tricked Harry into winning the Triwizard Tournament just to lure him into the whereabouts of Voldemort:
  Decent people are so easy to manipulate.
  • In the same book, we learn that Ludo Bagman was accused of spying for the Death Eaters during the First War; at his trial, he maintains that he was tricked into it and thought that his intel was going to the good guys. He was apparently telling the truth, since his suspicious actions in the present are unrelated to any of this.
  • Ginny Weasley in Chamber of Secrets, though she eventually becomes suspicious and tries unsuccessfully to destroy the diary.
  • Harry Potter himself in Order of the Phoenix, when Voldemort tricks him into going to the Department of Mysteries by making him believe falsely that Sirius Black was in danger. Especially notable given that he tells Snape (who at this point he believes loyal to Dumbledore) that he'd had the vision of Sirius in danger there, and still rushes in to do the Dark Lord's dirty work for him (in fact, Sirius dies because he goes there to aid Harry and is killed by Bellatrix).
  • Ultimately, almost every major character in the series is revealed to be, to some extent, pawns for either Dumbledore or Voldemort (or both). It's ultimately revealed that their decades-long game of wits to destroy each other is effectively the central keystone of the series. Harry himself is the ultimate piece in the game, being played by both sides at various points. Snape, however, is a willing pawn for Dumbledore.
  • Horace Slughorn is the main reason Dumbledore needed to come up with such a complex plan to defeat Voldemort in the first place. Voldemort, a student at the time, played up his "eager young star student" act to goad Slughorn into revealing some crucial knowledge of how Horcruxes are made. Horace actually realized later in life that he had been a pawn and that he was thus indirectly responsible for a great deal of harm, and edited his own memories out of shame.
• A Hole in the Fence: A benign example. Brigadier Beauras is the chief of the police squad tasked with keep people (usually just nosy teenagers) out of the Forbidden Zone. Nonetheless, Beauras does not know what lies beyond the Zone either, and after several years he is getting sick of watching over who-knows-what only because his superiors said so. One day, Beauras spots main character Grisón trying to (badly) crawl into the Zone, and he is about to drag him out of the shrubbery when he comes to a realization: He cannot run the risk of getting fired by snooping around, but the kid is risking barely anything. So, Beauras allows Grisón to sneak into the area, catches him when he is sneaking out, and lets him go with a scolding and a warning after subtly getting answers out of him.
• Honor Harrington:
  • The People's Republic of Haven under the Legislaturalists, who were secretly Mesan alpha lines. The Mesans set up the entire inefficient government, and before the coup effectively controlled the PRH's policies. It's hinted that the majority of the Legislaturalists were unaware of the Alignment's existence, by the way.
  • The entire Solarian League and its navy. The Mesan Alignment has several well placed naval officers in its pocket, up to and including the fleet admiral, allowing them to basically send whoever they want wherever they want. They use this power to set up a war between the League and the Star Empire of Manticore. Standout among their pawns is Admiral Josef Byng. Where every other Solarian officer they used was at least being bribed and/or blackmailed, Byng was just useful as an anti-Manticore bigot. They put him into position and let his personality do the rest.
• In Death: William from Rapture In Death doesn't even know that his wife, Reanna The Sociopath, has manipulated him in more ways than one to help her commit murder.
• Jaws: Three of the four selectmen helping Vaughn put pressure on Brody have no idea about how Vaughn in being driven by criminal connections and think they're just doing a favor for an old friend or protecting local jobs.
• Joel Suzuki: In Secret of the Songshell, Marshall tricks Joel and Felicity into thinking that they need to go on a quest for the Songshell to defeat the evil shaman Fourfoot. In fact, he wants to use the shell to steal all the Aura from Spectraland and return to Earth with godlike powers. Joel and Felicity don't learn the truth until they've helped him take the shell.
• In several works by Stephen King, Randall Flagg, aka the man in black, sets forth plans of conquest almost completely dependent on the efforts of Unwitting Pawns.
• Amara in Knowledge Of Angels- even though the orchestrator of the plot is not the villain, the plan does end up causing the death of a main character, as Amara has technically proven his guilt in rejecting God.
• In Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series, this role is amply filled by King Elias. From the start, Evil Sorcerer Pryrates tricks and manipulates him via promises: first, to communicate with his dead wife, and later, to grant him Immortality, all while turning him into a vessel for the return of the Big Bad Storm King.
  • Ironically enough, Pryrates is an even bigger Sucker. The Storm King manipulated him with the promise that Pryrates would be the "first among men" when The Storm King returned. And he was the first...to die.
  • The entire cast of protagonists are suckers, by the classic definition, as the most basic element of the Storm King's Evil Plan is to trick them into bringing him the Three Swords. It works perfectly.
• The Mental State: Zack enlists several of these over the course of the story. His most noteworthy examples are Charlie, who is used to threaten the inmates who have children, and the entire rapist population of the prison, who are tricked into doing hard labour and then have the crap beaten out of them for their efforts.
• Mistborn: In the original trilogy, everyone is an Unwitting Pawn for Ruin and its plan for complete... ruin. And in true Chess Master spirit, that's not even the end of it it, since Preservation made a Unwitting Pawn out of Ruin by making humans in ITS plan for offing Ruin. DANG. For the record, "everyone" includes the Big Bad and The Chessmaster. No mind goes unscrewed.
• A heroic case in Noob. Big Bad Tabris was initially created by scientists from the Empire, but rebelled against them. However, upon his creation, certain objectives were implanted into him. They includes fiding more rosaphir, the limited resource that the Empire needs to fuel its technology instead of the abundant but not completely reliable magic. In the fourth novel, his biggest move had the side effect of doing just that, indicating he's still guided by these objectives to an extent.
• The Pendragon Adventure: Poor Mark and Courtney. Every time they try to help out Bobby and his friends, they usually just end up playing into Saint Dane's hands.
• Kronos does this to everyone in Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Furthermore, especially in the second book of the new series, The Heroes of Olympus, many characters, among which the Big Bad herself, state that Percy will be Gaia's pawn, and that he'll bring about the destruction of the gods.
• In the Robert Ludlum novel The Prometheus Deception, Nick Bryson is an operative for the Directorate, a top-secret division of the U.S. government. Five years after his forced retirement, he's tracked down by the FBI director who informs him of the truth: The Directorate was founded by the KGB, Bryson's parents were killed to set him on this path, his foster "uncle" an enemy operative and even his beloved girlfriend was in on it. Every single mission he risked his life for and felt proud of actually was working against U.S. interests and thus his entire life has been one grand lie to be used by the enemy.
• In Rogue, Chad asks Kiara to give him a bike tour of the town and pick up some things for his sick brother along the way. He's actually using her to buy Sudafed from a bunch of different pharmacies so his parents can make meth.
• In The Saga Of Billy, Vetherr, the Betrayer, god of Creatures and Necessity, has created every race of monsters, hoping that one of them will be able to topple mankind's dominion over the world. If his creations have a mind of their own, even those that decide to oppose him power him through their birth and existence. Similarly, any being who would undertake a difficult but necessary endeavour will inconsciously pray to Vetherr, including those who want nothing but protecting their loved ones from his schemes.
• In The Silmarillion and The Children of Húrin, Húrin ends up as one after he is released by Morgoth. Driven mad by 28 years of Mind Rape he ends up unwittingly leading the enemy to the Hidden City of Gondolin, causes a civil war and the ultimate destruction of the last free tribe of Men, and sets events in motion that lead to the fall of the largest kingdom of Elves, all in an attempt to avenge his family's deaths . He only stops when Melian tells him that he's not helping anyone, and effectively acting as a tool of Morgoth's malice. Then he kills himself.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire, EVERYONE is this to Petyr Baelish. By various schemes and plots, he deepened the conflict between Stark and Lannister families, which escalated with Ned's execution. This got the North to take arms against the king, which started an entire war for the Seven Kingdoms. That's just in the first book. And he's not even nearly done. Even Tywin Lannister, Olenna Tyrell and Roose Bolton, Magnificent Bastards through and through, are all just another piece in the game.
  • To Littlefinger, or to Varys. Varys pushed Cersei towards paranoia so she would think every competent adviser who dared criticize her bad decisions to be a traitor and plot their demises. All so the Targaryen prince he hid away can reclaim the Iron Throne.
• In Stephen Marley's book Spirit Mirror, Chia Black Dragon tries very hard to dodge Nyak's plan by taking a third option. She fails, and ends up releasing Nyak from his can. Then in the next book, Mortal Mask, she does it again.
• Harry Harrison's The Stainless Steel Rat. Jim diGriz discovers that the government of the planet Cittanuvo is building a Warlord class battleship under the pretense that it's just a transport ship. After investigating, he finds out that two elite criminals tricked the government into building the ship with the intent of stealing it and using it for interstellar piracy.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • When Grand Admiral Thrawn from The Thrawn Trilogy is involved, characters become suckers by being so afraid that they play right into his hands through their caution, the best example being that when they need a certain device from one of two locations, they leak info that they will go to one, therefore showing him they are actually going to the other. Some characters in the Hand of Thrawn duology are wary of doing anything lest they be doing what he wants.
  • The Rebel clones in Galaxy of Fear. They're friendly enough, if kind of vacant, and tell our heroes to stay around, their leader is out right now but he'll be back soon and they should meet him. Turns out their leader is a Darth Vader Clone. But they have no idea that he should be their enemy—he's the one who gathered the skin and hair samples they were created from, and they have no memories about what being a Rebel means or what the Empire is.
  • In Dark Lord—The Rise of Darth Vader, rather than capture the fugitive Jedi quietly, Moff Tarkin allows them to slip past an Imperial checkpoint in their disguised stolen shuttle, so that when they land on Kashyyyk he can accuse the Wookiees of harboring fugitives as a pretext to invade the planet and round up thousands of Wookiee captives — perfect slaves for his Death Star project.
  • The Jedi Academy Trilogy reveals that the lead scientist responsible for designing the Death Star and Sun Crusher has no idea that they were used to destroy inhabited planets and star systems, believing them to be intended for large-scale mining projects. Justified in that she was brutally conditioned as a child to take a For Science! view of her work and not think beyond it.
• The Three Worlds Cycle: In the final book, Ian Irvine attempts to stop the main villain from using the most powerful magic in the world to take over said world by destroying the power sources of all magic, thus preventing anybody from using it. Except it turns out that the magic the Magnificent Bastard was using was the only one powered by something else, and what she had actually done was destroyed any and every chance the heroes had of stopping him. Whoops.
• The Traitor Son Cycle: Jean de Vrailly is trying to save the kingdom of Alba under the advice of his guardian angel. Predictably, the angel is not what it says it is, and it's playing de Vrailly like a fiddle for its own purposes.
• Tower of Somnus: Anna Donnst didn't realize until the literal last minute that she was just her mother's patsy. The whole time, when she thought her mother was "trusting her to get the job done," was just Belle distancing herself from a scapegoat.
• View from Below: Iris believes sending mortals to the Below is the only way to defeat the Crimson God, as per Peter's instructions. She doesn't realize that Peter is actually working for the Crimson God and that he witheld important information about how to actually weaken the mad deity. This means every mortal who fights the Crimson God is doomed to fail and die as yet another sacrifice to revive him.
• Under the advice of his dead wife's spirit and Big Good Kil'jaeden, the old orc shaman Ner'zhul in the Warcraft novel Rise of the Horde convinces his people to put away their differences and prepare to defend themselves against the Draenei. Except his wife's ghost was an illusion, Kil'jaeden is The Devil and this book is the Start of Darkness of the orcs that explains how they became the Always Chaotic Evil horde of the first two games. Oops.
• Most of the Blood Angels in James Swallow's Warhammer 40,000 novels Deus Encarmine and Deus Sanguinius. Sachiel in particular; Inquisitor Stele thinks how easy he is to manipulate, and when he realizes at last the corruption, Stele kills him, declares the loyal Blood Angels did it, and starts a battle.
• In the Warrior Cats novel The Forgotten Warrior, Sol shows up in ThunderClan for a visit and Firestar decides to let him stay for a bit, despite his evil acts. Later, when Lionblaze is on patrol, Onestar, leader of WindClan shows up and tells the ThunderClan cats to drive out Sol, which they had already been planning to do. However, since Onestar told them to do it, doing so would make ThunderClan look subserviant to WindClan and weaken it, so they are forced to ally with Sol against Onestar rather than driving Sol out.
• The Wheel of Time: The entire point of Elaida is to further the plans of the Forsaken by either doing what a servant says or just being an idiot.

Live-Action TV

• In 24, everyone takes turns being the Unwitting Pawn, up to and including Jack Bauer. Somehow even the Big Bad will end up a sucker either in his own scheme or be Out-Gambitted by the good guys. It's not a good idea to play Jack Bauer for a sucker though, 'cause that will only make him mad.
• The entire cast of Angel in Season 4. They spend a whole whack of time chasing down Jasmine, hoping to free the world from her version of lovey-dovey mind-control. At the end, their victory is entirely spoiled when evil law firm Wolfram and Hart contact them saying how happy they are that they've averted instant world peace. Nearly everything they had done in the past seasons had led to Jasmine's rise to power to begin with. Ironically, in the next season, the entire Wolfram and Hart becomes a sucker when Angel fools its higher-ups into thinking he is corrupted. And for giving him the means to do it, as a reward.
  • In Season 5, Gunn is manipulated by a W&H employee into signing off on allowing a sarcophagus to be delivered to the office, which allows on of Illyria's worshippers to resurrect her in Fred's body.
• Bradford in Season 2 of The Apprentice did the same, waiving his exemption, and was immediately fired SOLELY because he was an idiot. This is a rare example of someone becoming the victim of their own Batman Gambit. Bradford wanted to get rid of the terribly ineffective team leader, Ivana, but knew that he wouldn't be brought back into the boardroom since he had immunity; therefore he surrendered it so that she'd bring him back. Unfortunately, he didn't consider what the other possible outcome of that decision might be...
• Arrow: As Season 6 carries on, it becomes clear that the apparent new Big Bad, Cayden James, only went on his Roaring Rampage of Revenge against Team Arrow because someone else manipulated him into it by framing Oliver for killing James' son. Halfway through the season, this turns out to have been James' own supposed underling, Ricardo Diaz, who used James' rampage as a cover for eliminating key officials in Star City so that they can be replaced with bought off patsies, giving Diaz control of the city. Diaz kills James when he's no longer needed.
• In Babylon 5, this is how Ambassador Londo Mollari gets revenge on Lord Refa, his erstwhile ally, for his deadly political maneuverings. Londo makes it appear as though he is laying a trap for G'Kar to leave sanctuary at Babylon 5 so he can arrest him and thus gain political favor, and makes sure that the information is leaked, knowing that Lord Refa will try to undermine the plot by reaching G'Kar first so he can imprison and kill both G'Kar and Londo. However, the real trap is different: G'Kar was in on it the whole time and the guards were loyal to House Mollari, meaning that this Unwitting Pawn just walked into his own death trap, via No-Holds-Barred Beatdown from a group of angry Narns while a lively gospel song plays.
  • Unfortunately, Londo's attaché and friend Vir is also something of an Unwitting Pawn during the scheme; even though he wasn't a victim, he had to believe the fake version of the plot because there were telepaths involved, and the information had to appear genuine. He wasn't happy to be made a fool of.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Pearl and Nash were pawns of Twilight. And they were none too happy when they found out.
  • Roden in Twilight's real grand scheme.
  • Genevieve to both Twilight and Roden.
• In the fourth season finale of Chuck, it's revealed that every major plot point that has happened since the pilot has been part of a bigger scheme, with Chuck and possibly everyone involved with those major plot points as the unwitting pawns. Whose pawns, exactly, and in what game, has yet to be revealed.
• Doctor Who: Companions have unwittingly aided the villains before. In fact, the revived series sees the Doctor himself doing it. Examples of this include:
  • "Dalek": Henry van Statten and Rose Tyler are this to the Dalek, the latter more directly because neither of them has any way of knowing just what it is, and how dangerous. Van Statten's Smug Snake nature doesn't help either.
  • "The Long Game", in which the Ninth Doctor leaves Satellite Five after defeating the Monster of the Week, without bothering to help guide humanity back onto a "proper" path. By the time he returns 100 years later in "Bad Wolf", things have actually gotten worse, since he was playing into the hands or, more accurately, plungers of The Man Behind the Man.
  • "The Christmas Invasion", in which the Tenth Doctor manages to cause the downfall of Harriet Jones by whispering "six little words" in her assistant's ear. It was stated during the Ninth Doctor's reign that she would be the "architect of Britain's Golden Age", but the power vacuum left in her wake seemingly allowed the Master to gain power and eventually become Prime Minister. This indicates that the 10th Doctor did change history in "The Christmas Invasion", and worse, he changed a timeline he had previously talked about in glowing colors. There was supposedly a deleted scene explaining the entire concept. Russell T Davies, the writer of the episodes and then-showrunner, mentioned this in his Doctor Who Magazine column as an idea he'd had, and that as far as he was concerned it was the case — but also said he had never scripted it, let alone shot it.
    • This was somewhat alluded to in "The Sound of Drums", where Vivien Rook tells Lucy Saxon that her husband first became "real" (and subsequently launched the Archangel network) around the time of Harriet Jones' fall. How much of it can be attributed to the actions of either the Master or Tenth Doctor, however, is unknown. He does seem to blame himself for the Master's return by "The End of Time", as when Wilfred Mott tries to console the Doctor by saying it wasn't his fault, he sadly replied, "Isn't it?"
  • "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End": It turns out that everyone has been manipulated by Dalek Caan, who, having become a Mad Oracle after being exposed to the Time Vortex, seemed to lack the ability to pull this off. This especially extends to the Supreme Dalek and Davros, who, while having different opinions of the usefulness of Caan's information, don't realize that he intends to destroy the Daleks until it is too late to stop him.
  • The Daleks are admittedly pretty good at suckering the Doctor. In "Victory of the Daleks", the Daleks use the Doctor's hatred of the Daleks and love of Earth to not only create five retro-style Daleks (a net gain of two), but also for once, survive the events of the episode.
  • In "The Pandorica Opens", the Doctor goes to the Pandorica when it opens to see what's inside... only to realise he's been suckered by every alien in existence and it is in fact him that's meant to go inside the Pandorica in order to stop the TARDIS exploding. Needless to say, it does anyway. "The most dangerous warrior in the world" indeed.
  • In "The Doctor's Wife", it is revealed that the Doctor has been being manipulated for a very long time by the TARDIS, who was waiting for a Time Lord crazy enough to try and steal her so she could see the universe. The Doctor protested that he chose her because someone had left the door unlocked. The TARDIS, briefly able to speak, replied that of course "someone" had.
• Dollhouse: Paul Ballard gets suckered into finding a way into the Dollhouse to rescue Caroline, thereby distracting all the security measures, while Alpha puts his actual plan into play and cheerfully sacrifices Ballard to DeWitt's not-so-tender mercies.
  • And at the end of Season 2, it's revealed that Boyd Langton is secretly the head of Rossum and has been manipulating everyone at the Dollhouse all along.
• Game of Thrones:
  • House Stark's entire conflict with the Lannisters was instigated by Littlefinger, who used the values of both houses to move them against each other (The Starks' Honor Before Reason and the Lannister's Might Makes Right ethos, though the Lannisters comprise of schemers and chessmasters). This war cost the Lannisters a lot of money and thus made them inherit a debt-ridden Kingdom, and then turn on each other when their Puppet King dies and Tyrion is accused by his own sister with his father's acquiescence.
  • Catelyn Stark was a victim of Littlefinger's, which hit her hard, as her impulsive reactions to an assassination attempt against Bran with a dagger that belonged to Tyrion and her credulity to an engineered letter sent by Lysa Arryn are two of the major reasons why her house sparks the war with the Lannisters.
  • At various points, Sansa Stark is this to the Lannisters, the Tyrells, and Littlefinger across Season 3, where without her knowledge, leave alone consent, she is traded as a match, ultimately becoming Tyrion's wife. This is merely the pretext, it turns out that Littlefinger allied himself to the Tyrells and arranged for Joffrey's assassination. Sansa, through a Littlefinger stooge, Ser Dontos, carries a necklace which contains poison and as Tyrion's wife is close enough to be seated on the wedding dais that Olenna could reach her, collect the poison and pass it to Joffrey's cup at the opportune moment. She is "rescued" by Ser Dontos and Littlefinger from the wrath of Cersei, who has put a large bounty on her head.
  • The Three-Eyed Raven was aware of what created Hodor and brought Bran to the past Winterfell apparently to witness the child Ned departing to the Eyrie, but in reality brought him to cause Wylis' mind-loop into Hodor, which happened immediately after Ned left. Though this has cruel overtones, had it not happened, Hodor would not have brought Bran to North of the Wall in the first place safely, nor he would have ultimately saved his life, for the moment foiling the White Walkers. Had it not been for this point, it would have been an entirely Senseless Sacrifice.
  • The Master Torturer clearly had no idea what kind of game Ramsay was playing, or what role he gave him.
  • For all his intelligence, experience and ruthlessness, Tywin Lannister falls prey to the same mistake Ned Stark did; he trusted Littlefinger and raised him to a position of supremacy in the Riverlands and allowed him to marry the widowed lady of the Vale, making him arguably the second most powerful man in Westeros besides Tywin himself. In return, Littlefinger killed Joffrey with the Tyrells, in part because Tywin got Catelyn killed and partially because it would plunge the Seven Kingdoms into yet more chaos, which was a goal he stated aloud to Tywin and kidnapped Sansa Stark from Kings' Landing, giving Littlefinger an avenue for control of yet another of the Seven Kingdoms... and Tyrion discovers that his predecessor's supposed "magic" at financing the Iron Throne was really heavy borrowing from the Iron Bank of Braavos, an entity which even Tywin doesn't dare cross.
  • Cersei Lannister. After transforming the Sparrows into the Faith Militant and giving them free riegn to imprison any deviants towards the Gods, which ends up getting both Loras and Margaery captured, Cersei confidently assumes that she is controlling them like puppets. It never occurs to her until it's too late that the now all-powerful fundamentalist organization would imprison her for her own deviant lifestyle once they no longer needed her.
• In Glee, Sue gets Brittany to give her the set list for New Directions, but Brittany has no clue about what she's going to do with it.
• House of Anubis has Eddie and KT. They were manipulated by the villain into believing that the Staff of Osiris would stop Ammit from being unleashed. They only learned too late that it did the opposite. Eddie's vision didn't help...
• In House of Cards (UK), Francis Urquhart uses as many people as he can for his own political gain — be it reporters, colleagues or even the prime minister. He makes sure to have as many people in his pocket as possible so that they can be made useful when needed. If anyone goes against him or can be of benefit when their public image is ruined — he will destroy them. Murder is not out of the question.
  • This applies for House of Cards (US), the American version,^note  Or second adaptation of the books, if you prefer as well.
• Juken Sentai Gekiranger: At the end of the series, Evil Overlord Rio goes down with a Villainous BSOD when he finds out that his entire life has been masterminded by Manipulative Bastard Long.
• Kamen Rider:
  • Averted in Kamen Rider OOO, if it was played straight, Eiji would have just been used by Ankh as a means of farming Cell Medals. IF it was played straight that is... Instead, Ankh explains why he needs him, which was not a good move on his part, as it leads to Eiji refusing to transform when Ankh needed him to in episode two, and in the next episode, the tables turn and Ankh is forced to do what Eiji says or else he will throw away his Transformation Trinket.
  • And in Kamen Rider Wizard, it gets played straighter than straight. Yes, it's another instance of Evil Mentor having a massive hand in this trope, though what sets said mentor apart from the others was that he's not only the Big Bad, he was setting up not just Haruto himself, but the entire Phantom race. See, his plan involves using Wizards to power a ritual, but in order for Wizards to be created, they need to hit their Despair Event Horizon, but come back before they fully cross it. He already had one Wizard in the form of Haruto, but he needed to get other Wizards. This is where the Phantoms come in, as they are able to get these people to cross the horizon with the intended goal to make even more Phantoms. Needless to say, once his commanders find out about this, their reactions ranged from being unable to comprehend the idea of being used to downright plotting against him.
  • In Kamen Rider Gaim, Mitsuzane discovered this out the hard way when the villains he had been "manipulating" for his own plans are actually the ones manipulating him all along. This was further lampshaded by Ryoma Sengoku/Kamen Rider Duke after he dissects the Golden Fruit from Mai, then came along the No-Holds-Barred Beatdown being dished out on Micchy.
    Ryoma: Hey, Kureshima rich boy! Didn't Takatora teach you? Why you shouldn't be a naughty boy? (grabs him and pushes Micchy against the wall while strangling him) Liars... cowards... It's because naughty boys fall prey to actually evil adults!
  • Everyone in Kamen Rider Build to Evolto. He needs to purify and gather the 60 Fullbottles, repair his Evol Driver, and get Ryuga to Hazard Level 5 so that his body becomes a suitable vessel for him in order to accomplish his plan of destroying the world. Thus, for ten years he sets up Japan's three divided states, with the help of Nanba Heavy Industries, to go to war with each other, so that they'll purify the Fullbottles for him as part of their military research, as well as gather them all together for him. When one of the researchers figures out too much, he has his memory wiped and starts directing his amnesiac identity, Sento, to become a superhero, so that he'll still continue purifying Fullbottles. He also sends Banjou his way, allowing the two to bond together, thus giving Ryuga a motivation to raise his Hazard Level. Even when Sento figures out he's being manipulated, Evolto exploits the heroes' heroic tendencies so that they keep doing things that further his plans. By Episode 35, he's succeeded in accomplishing all of his above-stated goals and is just short of "destroy the world" on his to-do list.
    • In an unexpected turn of events, Sento manages to completely invert this by taking all of the energy Evolto had managed to gather after doing all of the above and using that power to combine two Earths that'll create a completely new world where neither the divided states nor Evolto himself exists at all.
• The "rich and powerful" marks Nate Ford mentions during the opening credits for Leverage are usually these. At some point along the way, their Mooks will often fall to this trope or Elliot, whichever one hits first.
  • The team usually ends up making their targets into unwitting pawns, but they themselves end up as the Suckers (briefly) in "The Ho-Ho-Ho Job." They quickly caught on to the fact that a hacker has set up a scam at a local mall that will net the credit card numbers of nearly everyone who makes a purchase, and realize the only way to stop it is to cut the trunk line. They do so... only said trunk line also enables the security measures as the local branch of the Treasury, which was the hacker's real target.
• In Lexx, captain Stanley Tweedle's backstory, in which he was supposed to deliver what amounted to blueprints for the emperor's superweapon to the rebel forces, and instead ended up providing the emperor with the codes to deactivate the rebel's planetary defenses. The rest of humanity in the Light Universe were pawns as well, to the point that they willingly fed themselves to the Big Bad when he demanded it.
• Lost
  • Poor John Locke is now the king of this trope. In the course of the last seasons he has been a pawn used by a supernatural being who apparently planned Locke's whole ordeal, his reputation as someone "special" and then his final sacrifice so that he could take John's form and ultimately kill his own enemy, Jacob. The sheer number of episodes in which this Gambit Roulette at his expense has unfolded makes him something of an Unwitting Pawn Marathon Man. Also, Ben manipulated him into blowing up the submarine.
  • He also kept juggling Idiot Balls, Villain Balls and Conflict Balls all throughout the series, while every single flashback has portrayed him as a gullible loser. It's a testament to Terry O'Quinn's acting that, in spite of that, he has consistently been one of the most interesting, popular and badass characters of the show.
  • For a devilish Manipulative Bastard and a supposedly wise ageless man, Ben and Richard too came across as total dupes; Locke, Ben and Richard, The Three Stooges?
• In the Merlin (1998) series, multiple characters (Arthur, Merlin, Guinevere) end up as Mab's suckers at one point or another.
• NCIS: In 6.21, "Toxic", Abby builds a biological weapon without knowing what it is.
• Next (2020):
  • Next buys Ted's cooperation using various new technologies and blackmail material, but ultimately was only using him to get itself captured by the NSA and taken to a server farm compatible with its software.
  • After the bombing at the task force headquarters, Ben reaches out to his dad, who happens to be the Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence, for advice. Unfortunately for him, his dad's advice is geared towards acquiring Next for the government, rather than destroying it, and thus Ben ends up at cross purposes with the rest of the team.
• Once Upon a Time: Belle was completely manipulated by Regina/The Evil Queen into trying to depower Rumplestiltskin with True Love's Kiss. Rumplestiltskin flips when he realizes that she can take away his powers, assumes that Belle is working for Regina, and tells her to leave. Poor Belle honestly wasn't working for Regina, but the Queen wins either way — either Rumple is depowered, or she can abduct Belle and use her as a trump card against Rumple at a later date. (She instead tells Rumple that Belle is dead and abducts her, so she not only has a trump card but has one that Rumple would never expect.)
• Orphan Black: DYAD is good for setting these up. One of the biggest ones is their former mole, Delphine, who Rachel manipulates into unknowingly helping with the abduction of Kira.
• In the last episode of Season 3 in Person of Interest it is revealed that the entire group of Vigilance was this for Decima. Decima created the group solely so Vigilance would out Northern Lights to remove the competition for their Samaritan project, then Decima framed Vigilance for a terrorist bombing to get the US Government to hand over the feeds to make Samaritan operational. After that, Decima then uses this to wipe out Vigilance when they have outlived their usefulness.
• Though she was fairly bad to begin with, Kai Winn in the final episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine certainly seems to fulfill this role to Gul Dukat's Chessmaster.
• Supernatural
  • Both Sam and Dean Winchester have played right into the villains' hands, making the apocalypse possible. Grief-stricken Dean's Deal with the Devil leads to him going to hell where he finally gives in to the offer to torture others to spare himself, breaking the first seal holding back Lucifer. Similarly screwed in the head, Sam is seduced to the The Dark Side by Ruby just enough to get him to kill Lilith, which they all expected to prevent the last seal from being shattered; in reality, she was the last seal. What neat little bookends, guys.
  • Castiel's extremely straightforward nature, unfortunately, leaves him rather easily manipulated by other characters, as he doesn't usually anticipate that someone will lie to him. Metatron takes full advantage of this in Season 8 and manages to trick Cas into helping him with a spell to cast all of the angels out of Heaven. Castiel is horrified when he finds out the truth.
  • It's also implied that Castiel was this for much of Season 4. Despite his personal doubts, it seems he just trusted that Heaven was giving him the right orders until he somehow found out that Heaven had been planning the Apocalypse all along. And it's never stated whether his superiors eventually revealed it to him, expecting him to go along with it, or if he figured it out himself.
  • Sam becomes this again in Season 11, when he prays to God for help and receives visions that he believes are God trying to give him hints. It turns out he is receiving supernatural visions (not just having weird dreams), but that they're actually from Lucifer, as a ploy to get him to come back to the Cage in search of a way to defeat the Darkness. Sam initially performs exactly as expected, but then point-blank refuses to become Lucifer's vessel again, even though it could help defeat the Darkness. Unfortunately, Sam is no longer the only suitable vessel...
• Survivor
  • A lot of Suckers have come and gone, but Erik Reichenbach from Micronesia stands out. In what many considered to be the dumbest move in the show's history, Erik gives away his Individual Immunity and is promptly voted off by the conniving female alliance, after being conned in a transparent ploy for redemption.
  • The Samoa season was full of Unwitting Pawns. Most of Foa Foa and almost every member of Galu, except Brett and possibly Kelly and Monica, fell into this trope. Knowing that Kelly was just brilliantly blindsided, Monica saw the writing on the wall and just decided to antagonize Russell in the end, and Brett was fully aware that he couldn't have won because he lost the final immunity challenge. Is it any wonder Russell did so well, what with all the suckers who were practically lining up for the slaughter? (Players would have voted him out way sooner... or dragged his arrogant ass to the end and made him take all the nasty shots from the angry jury as Natalie did.)
  • Russell pulls this off again in Heroes vs. Villains, this time using Tyson to break up what should have been a foolproof plan to get either Russell or Parvati out of the game by tricking him into switching his vote to Parvati, which broke up the even distribution of votes that Boston Rob's alliance would have used to get either Russell or Parvati out depending on who Russell used his Hidden Immunity Idol on. Instead, with Tyson's vote switched to Parvati, she now has four votes to Russell's two... and Tyson's three. Russell gave the immunity idol to Parvati, and bye bye Tyson.
• Chris, Victoria and Allison Argent in Teen Wolf, along with the rest of the hunters, have no idea that they are just enabling Gerard's plot to become a werewolf in order to survive terminal cancer. The ultimate however is Jackson, who does not even remember transforming into the Kanima, much less the murders that it commits at the direction of Matt.
  • Throughout Season 3B the Nogitsune plays the rest of the cast like a fiddle, using its possession of Stiles to win their trust. The best example comes in "Letharia Vulparia", where the Nogitsune spends an entire episode impersonating Stiles, with Scott not doubting him for a second.
• Nick Hanway in The Thick of It. The spin doctor is convinced that the appointment of a new Prime Minister will also require a new chief spin doctor, but he seriously underestimates Malcolm Tucker...
• Van Helsing (2016): Sam is manipulated by the Oracle into becoming the Fourth Elder under the belief that he'll become the new Dark One. Instead, he's used as a portal to free her, which kills him.
• The Villains of Valley View: In Season 1, Hartley is this to Oculon, who poses as a student named Declan to use her crush on him to get closer to Amy and the Maddens to turn them in to Onyx.

Manhwa

• He's Dedicated to Roses: Hak-Yoon ends up being one to Mi-Mi, who manipulated him by pretending to like him, then had him and his gang rape her maid and film it in front of two of said maid's best friends, all because she was jealous that the maid had gotten the boy she was really in love with, and when said plan fell through, abandoned him to his fate and told him he was nothing more than a pawn for her revenge. He isn't too happy about this.

Podcasts

• Cecil of Welcome to Night Vale cheerfully reports the obviously bogus coverup stories concocted by the City Council with little to no indication that he doesn't believe every word. Also, choosing not to question what one is told seems to be the only way to survive living in Night Vale.
  "Ignorance may not actually be bliss, but it certainly is less work."

Tabletop Games

• Hunter: The Vigil: This is a constant danger. It can be pretty hard for Hunters to tell the difference between the good-ish supernaturals and the true villains, and they often get suckered into working for the latter. For example: Division Six is a group of mage-hunters being used by a Seer of the Throne as his private hit squad, the Knights of Saint George are serving the agenda of an Abyssal entity, the Inquisition is run by a ghoul, Les Mysteres are run by the Pure, and so forth.
• Magic: The Gathering: Lim-Dûl the Necromancer was a powerful sorcerer that terrorized Ice Age Terisiare with his magic and undead armies, but was ultimately a tool for the wills of the beings he gained his power from — the spirit of Mairsil the Pretender, who inhabited Lim-Dûl's Ring of Power and slowly poisoned his mind in order to use him for his own plans of vengeance, and the planeswalker Leshrac, who saw Lim-Dûl as a valuable minion and intended to use his undead army for his purposes. Eventually, Leshrac asserted full control and made sure than Lim-Dûl had no delusions about who precisely he served.
• Ravenloft runs on Paranoia Fuel, so this is so common in adventures it's almost more of a Plot Twist when it doesn't happen.
• Warhammer: It's strongly implied that Bretonnia's whole "Cult of the Lady" religion (and accompanying rejection of firearms and steam technology) is a complete sham, set up by the Wood Elves who dwell in the forest in the south of the country so they have a nice, easily-manipulated buffer zone to protect them from the world. The End Times reveals that, yes, the Lady is actually the Elven goddess Lileath.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • The Adeptus Mechanicus is all but stated to (knowingly, in the case of the higher-ups) worship the Void Dragon as the Omnissiah (rather than an aspect of the Emperor). The C'tan being on par with the Chaos Gods in terms of Big Bad and the Mechanicus being responsible for humanity being able to travel the stars and defend themselves, this is as bad as it sounds. This also leads to a lot of enthusiastic Mechanicus dropping in on tomb worlds, waking up the Necrons as they poke around, and the next thing you know there's yet another system or two lost to the Imperium.
  • Read the introduction to any Imperium-centric story carefully for a nice bit of horror: It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor of Mankind has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods. What Gods do they mean by that? It could just be a figure of speech, but...

Theatre

• Fittingly, many characters wind up as pawns in Chess. It all culminates in “The Deal (No Deal)”, a song that’s essentially just ten minutes of Walter and Molokov manipulating the entire cast.
• Jesus Christ Superstar portrays Judas as a man who unwillingly advanced the agenda of Caiaphus and the Council, as well as fulfilling prophecy.
• Othello: Iago manipulates everyone in his vengeful goals, leading to, as is the case with a Shakespeare tragedy, multiple deaths.
• Thrill Me has the moment where Richard finds out that Nathan has been lying to him about basically everything since the murder, including when Richard thought he had the upper hand. In fact, Nathan's masterminding is the reason they got caught. Yes, getting caught was part of Nathan's plan.

Toys

• In BIONICLE, Makuta Teridax used the entire universe as his pawns. The goal of the Toa Mata was to reawaken Mata Nui, put into a deadly coma by Makuta himself. Knowing that they will succeed because it was their destiny (and since Mata Nui's death would cause the end of the world), he manipulated nearly everyone he came across and lead his Brotherhood of Evil with an Evil Plan whose exact details he kept to himself. Long story short: his manipulating ensured that he would have enough time and be in the right place to commit a Grand Theft Me on Mata Nui when the heroes awakened him, thereby becoming the ruler of the universe.

Visual Novels

• Ace Attorney:
  • Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice For All has the third case where Franziska performs a surprise search on Acro's room, which forces him to hide the murder weapon on his person. Franziska only did the search because of Gumshoe, who in turn brought the idea of the search due to Edgeworth suggesting it to him and knowing Phoenix would be the defense attorney on the case. This turn of events causes Phoenix to correctly guess that the murderer hid the weapon at the bottom of his wheelchair and under the blanket he wears over his legs. Franziska loses and is flabbergasted that she, a perfectionist, made a mistake and curses herself for conducting the surprise search. In actuality, she was just the unwitting pawn to Edgeworth, who helped Phoenix catch the true killer without him even knowing it.
  • Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations:
    • Pearl Fey, who is manipulated into triggering the events of the final case by her mother, Morgan Fey. While Pearl thinks she's just following her mother's orders for Maya's sake, her actions are actually the means to kill Maya. Luckily, the plan isn't fulfilled thanks to a third party who knew about it beforehand.
    • In Trials and Tribulations' flashback cases, Dahlia Hawthorne uses several. 3-4's defendant was their fall guy in a fake kidnapping scheme (and later for the murder of their other accomplice), the victim of case 3-1 was someone they got close to because he was a chemistry student and could get them access to poison, and Phoenix Wright himself was to unwittingly carry a decisive piece of evidence away from the courtroom, disguised as a present.
  • In Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, poor Klavier Gavin gets used as an unwitting accomplice twice by people he trusts. His friend Daryan used him as a drug mule for a smuggled Borginian cocoon, and his brother Kristoph used him to frame Phoenix Wright for forged evidence that Kristoph himself had actually commissioned, much to Klavier's horror when Apollo reveals the plots in court.
  • Gyakuten Kenji 2:
    • Edgeworth himself gets a taste of this when it turns out that the reason he's had to solve so many murders in such a short timeframe is because Simon Keyes had goaded their personal enemies into committing murder, and then pointed Edgeworth in the right direction to catch the immediate culprits without realizing who was the ultimate instigator.
    • Sebastian Debeste gets a particularly painful version. He's a good kid, if a little dense and not quite up for his job, but he trusts his father, Blaise Debeste, and that person uses that trust to gain access to important evidence (which he then destroys) and to obfuscate investigations via Sebastian's incompetence. Blaise even refers to him as a "pawn that isn't user-friendly" when trying to break him mentally just to get him to leave the room.
• Several in the Danganronpa series:
  • Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc:
    • Makoto in Chapter 1. The whole point of the trial is Naegi trying to clear his name in Sayaka's death, as she was killed in his shower. They'd switched rooms for the night, but nobody else is inclined to take him at his word for it. What's interesting is that he was framed by the victim in her own failed attempt to murder someone else — Makoto is only cleared because even the murderer fell for Sayaka's trick and thought he was in Sayaka's room, hence thinking the shower was locked (girls' showers have locks, boys' don't) instead of faulty and jammed shut.
    • The murder plot in the third chapter depends on the killer tricking someone into becoming their accomplice by proposing a plan where both parties kill someone and each act as an accomplice for the other's murder, thus allowing them to graduate together. Unfortunately for the accomplice, the actual plan had the accomplice being lured into a secluded room and murdered after they'd done their job. Celestia even admits that it was pretty obvious that she was planning to dispose of Hifumi from the start, but he trusted her and after she told him Kiyotaka had raped her and stolen Alter Ego, he was too blinded by rage to think clearly.
  • Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair: Teruteru and "Byakuya" (actually the Ultimate Imposter) are the Unwitting Pawns of Nagito. Nagito sent a note warning "Byakuya" of his murder plot to get "Byakuya" to host a party in the old dining hall then got himself assigned cleaning duty so he could set up a murder plot. Then he allowed Teruteru to discover what he's doing, confesses and tells him his entire motive. He managed to entice "Byakuya" to set up the Locked Room Mystery Nagito needed in a room which goes completely dark in a blackout and gets Teruteru to try and murder him, starting the Killing Game. He didn't intend for "Byakuya" to die, however; the Ultimate Impostor proved quicker on the uptake than Nagito expected.
  • Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony: The fourth trial sees the true murderer get away scot-free even after their plot is uncovered because they used a pawn to do the actual dirty work (which would of course make the person unable to graduate, but they weren't planning on graduating with this plot), so the official Blackened was the pawn. Kokichi Oma used a Flashback Light in the virtual reality to get Gonta to fall into despair, and then convinced him to kill Miu Iruma (who was planning on killing Kokichi) and graduate so the other students would be killed (telling Gonta it was a Mercy Kill because the outside world was so terrible). The other students are furious with Kokichi for forcing them to execute Gonta, but they can't really do anything to him.
• Double Homework: Unlike the protagonist, whom Dennis enlists for the same purpose, Henry is completely unaware that Dennis is using his voice recordings in order to catfish unsuspecting girls and women over the internet.
• Fate/stay night has Shirou and Rin being pawns in the schemes of Gilgamesh and Kotomine in all three routes, with Shinji joining them in Unlimited Blade Works.
• Monster Prom: The REVENGE ending. Miranda will ask you to do a series of seemingly random tasks to help her out, with very flimsy reasons for it. It turns out that this is her plan to kill the water polo team for kicking her out by feeding them eggs from a sea monster and them telling said sea monster they ate her eggs, she reveals that this was her plan if invited to prom after the events are completed.
• Mary in Shikkoku no Sharnoth is obviously the pawn of multiple competing factions, but doesn't realize it fully until well into the story.
• In the Zero Escape trilogy, everyone who isn't Zero or willingly working for Zero is an unwitting pawn to some extent. Special mentions:
  • Ace a.k.a. Gentarou Hongou from Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors ends up being used by Zero to mop up the other Corrupt Corporate Executives who ran the Nonary Game 9 years ago.
  • Dio, a Free The Soul agent from Virtue's Last Reward, sent to sabotage the Nonary Game. What he didn't realize was that not only the organizers anticipate his infiltration of the game, it was actually necessary. If that's not enough, revelations in Zero Time Dilemma show he was also Brother's unwitting pawn as well, sent in to deliberately fail without Dio's knowledge.

Web Animation

• Vegeta ends up being this for Commander Daiko in Dragon Ball Deliverance, as he was being used by him to weaken the out of control Broly enough that the Legendary Super Saiyan could be retrieved and put under Daiko's control.
• In the Strong Bad Email "stupid stuff", Strong Bad makes a bet with Kevin Grumbles that he can make Homestar say something intelligent. In desperation, he tries saying something nonsensical ("I say there, Homestar... butt's twelve by pies?"); as it turns out, Homestar apparently made his own bet with Kevin Grumbles that he could make Strong Bad say something stupid, and Strong Bad just won it for him. The real kicker is that Kevin actually wanted Strong Bad to make Homestar say something stupid, but Strong Bad thought that was too little of a challenge. Perhaps he should've asked an insultingly simple math question. He could have at least gotten Coulomb's law out of it. He also gets suckered in the game Strong Badia the Free. He spends the entire game trying to become the new king, only to find out that it was all a ploy by the King of Town to get Strong Bad stuck in the castle and the King in Strong Bad's position.
• In If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device, the Emperor makes Magnus realize that both his supposed savior, Tzeentch, and his supposed Cool Big Bro Horus manipulated him so that he'd fall to Chaos and doom his people and Imperium. This plays crucial role in Magnus' Heel–Face Turn.
• RWBY:
  • In Volume 3, Yang's predictable fighting style becomes a useful tool for the villains to exploit during the Vytal Festival tournament. She is tricked into attacking Mercury unprovoked after defeating him in the finals. This results in a huge negative public backlash against Beacon which attracts vast hordes of Grimm that the military struggles to contain. This is the beginning of Cinder's plan to turn people against their governments, kingdoms against each other and start the process of destroying the Huntsmen Academies.
  • Discussed. It is apparent to characters that General Ironwood's militancy, paranoia, and domineering, uncooperative and controlling nature are easily exploited by the villains. Tyrian comments that Salem's plans depend on Ironwood maintaining a mistrustful attitude, while Cinder observes that Ironwood's extremism makes him predictable. In Volume 7, the heroes repeatedly warn him that squeezing Mantle so hard to achieve his goals is playing into Salem's hands by turning Mantle against Atlas. After shooting Oscar for warning him that he's becoming as dangerous as Salem, Ironwood's descent into villainy climaxes when he holds Mantle hostage, threatening to bomb the city if the heroes don't surrender. Stating that he's doing Salem's job for her, Marrow abandons Ironwood, and Winter joins him. By the end of the volume, the kingdom is destroyed and the villains obtain two Relics.
  • Discussed. Jacques's obsession with winning makes him a perfect dupe for Watts. When Watts offers to help rig the election so he can lay off his Mantle workers to cut costs, he happily agrees to give the doctor his log-in credentials to do so. Not only do the lay-offs and Jacques's victory increase tensions, draw more Grimm to the city, and gives Jacques the foothold to interfere with Ironwood, his upgraded access allows Watts to not only hack into more of Atlas' systems but also begin to lock the rest of the council out. Watts then uses this access to turn off the highly secure heating grid, causing riots and a full-on Grimm invasion.
  • Councilman Sleet has legitimate reasons to denounce Ironwood for abusing his power and keeping secrets from the Council. However, being Locked Out of the Loop makes him vulnerable to exploitation, allowing Jacques to manipulate him into supporting an attempt to remove Ironwood from the council. Once he's brought into the loop about Salem's existence, and Jacques' deal with Watts is exposed, he becomes cooperative.
  • In Volume 9, Neo's obsession with obtaining revenge against Ruby ends up accidentally furthering a different villain's plans by given them the perfect weapon to achieve their aim. The Curious Cat is Team RWBY's friend and guide through the Ever After, innocently asking all sorts of questions to satiate its curiosity that have the unfortunate effect of emphasising how dire Remnant's situation is, contributing to Ruby's slow mental breakdown. When Neo breaks down Ruby for her own revenge, the Cat intervenes and reveals that it wanted Ruby broken because it needs an despairing soul to possess in order to travel to Remnant to try and locate the Creators of the Ever After; it's been driven insane by the unsolvable question of why their Creators the brother gods abandoned the Ever After and will go to any lengths to find the answer. However, Neo's revenge robs them of Ruby, but leaves Neo an Empty Shell upon realising that Vengeance Feels Empty. The Cat is thrilled by this because it means it can possess the super-powerful Neo, who turns out to be a far more useful host for the Cat than Ruby.

Webcomics

• Bad Moon Rising recently showed that Terry was originally sent to Sokolov Academy to act as a spy for his mother, but was unaware of the real reason he was sent to the school at the time.
• Sillice of Drowtales when Kalki tells her that the Nidraa'chal she's just fighting are just a diversion for the enemies that are currently most probably killing the Val'Sharess. Sillice then barges into the ravaged tower, confronts one of her sisters (the only one NOT included in this plot) and then gets accused of having killed all the guards in an attempt to overthrow her mother, and has to run away to exile with their mortal enemies. No one suspects the ones that are truly pulling the strings: Snadhya'rune, Sarv'swati and Zala'ess, who get off scot free and take control of the clan while pretending their mother is still alive.
• Fighter of 8-Bit Theater is an example of this. The other Light Warriors often get him to do things by convincing him it is for the greater good. There's also the fact that he still believes they're heroes after all the untold damage they've caused.
• In El Goonish Shive, Tara is manipulated into attempting to kill Elliot by the Immortal named Voltaire who she believes is forbidden from lying like the Ancients of her world.
• Nick in the "Surreptitious Machinations" arc of General Protection Fault. The entire plan hinges on him being isolated from his friends and building the "Project Velociraptor" to power Trudy's energy weapons, enabling her and C.R.U.D.E. to take over the world. He's also one of the only ones who still trusts Trudy, so the heroes have to try to convince him to see the truth.
• Terezi of Homestuck is usually Awesome by Analysis, but she's recently fallen into this at the hands of Gamzee, who she has no idea turned evil.
  • Absolutely everyone to Doc Scratch. There's a reason he calls people who aren't omniscient "suckers." Which is taken beyond the impossible in [S] Cascade, where its revealed that he manipulated the entire main cast into creating the Green Sun. Note that the main cast has been doing everything in their power to destroy the thing. Scratch's last word, said to Gamzee, is even "S u c k e r s", a succinct summary of just how much he played everyone.
• The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!: In an uncharacteristically manipulative moment, in her second appearance, Voluptua lets Bob fly off on what he thinks is a very simple mission, while she suspects an alien supercriminal just might be waiting for him.
• The Order of the Stick
  • Miko Miyazaki leads the villains to Azure City and allows them to discover the location of Soon's Gate. She kills Lord Shojo, leaving the city more vulnerable to attack. Then she destroys Soon's gate when the villains are on the verge of losing, giving them a chance to escape certain death. And all the while, she believes that she's following the will of the (Lawful Good) gods. Although she was only being manipulated into the first one of these, the least important error really. The other two she she accomplished on her own.
  • Vaarsuvius turned into one when they attacked Xykon with their newfound power, knocking him off his throne, exactly as the fiends who granted Vaarsuvius that power planned.
  • As it turns out, Xykon himself is an unwitting pawn to Redcloak, who's been playing humble servant all these years in order to get Xykon to aid in completing the Plan (which, it seems, doesn't aid Xykon's own goals at all). But he doesn't mind being a pawn, because he has better things to do with his time than deal with a backstabber who already has a self-destruct button tied to the back of their head: The Monster In The Darkness is brainwashed to kill Redcloak the moment he betrays Xykon openly.
• Kat Vance from Sequential Art finds herself in the Quinten Research Laboratory, where she learns the human staff has succumbed to deadly gas that permeated most of the facility. The A.I. Is a Crapshoot prototype computer OZ-BASIC explains that the fault that caused the tragedy exists in other Quinten facilities, and asks Kat's help in creating an uplink in panel #474, so that others can be forewarned in time. In reality, OZ-BASIC seeks to take control of the Pipingrad Death Ray satellite, with which to expunge all those that would oppose its Evil Overlord status.
• Riff of Sluggy Freelance was eventually revealed to be this, having worked for the Nebulous Evil Organisation Hereti-Corp producing inventions in return for funding, and not realizing the purposes they were being put to.
• Tower of God: Rachel, Khun, and Bam all play into Yu Hansung's and Headon's hands in their plot against the ruling system.
• Trevor (2020): Downplayed. The new members of the medical team have no idea that they are part of a military-funded Super-Soldier project with Cold-Blooded Torture-style experiments, but they are at least somewhat aware of how dark the work they've been doing is.
• Played with in We Are The Wyrecats. K.A. certainly was this, but the rest of her team, as it turns out, is more than aware that the Big Bad is using them. They just aren't equipped with a lot of options on fighting back at the moment. By letting her remain unaware of this, K.A. effectively becomes her own team's Unwitting Pawn, and she does not take it well when she finds out.

Web Originals

• The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids: In the short story "The Resurrection of the Wellsians", all of the schemes and counter-schemes of the characters turn out to have been furthering the aims of the Wellsians themselves.
• Only just before the final battle of Web Game Demon Thesis do the main characters realize that they've been pawns for the Manipulative Bastard Eldritch Abomination Mesmerus that they hate. After a strange stone totem was brought to the library of their university, the main characters suddenly found themselves gifted with Elemental Powers and other spells, and fighting off various monsters while Mesmerus encourages the violence. At the end they learn this is because them using his power to cast spells is necessary to weaken the barrier between dimensions and allow Mesmermus to cross over into our world. By the time they do learn this, it's too late to do anything, and Mesmerus appears.
• In The Normal Innocent Bystander's Survival Guide, point 17 is:
  "If the Evil Overlord offers you immortality, superpowers, or infinite wealth, and all you have to do is something that seems terribly trivial, don't. It's a trick. You will be used as a pawn in a larger game, and then crushed like a bug."
• In The Ruins of an American Party System, it's eventually revealed that Floyd Olson (otherwise presented as a President Mary Sue), has for most of his administration been manipulated by his Attorney General, Huey Long, who has been exploiting his influence over Olson to build his own political empire within the government, effectively turning Olson into his puppet. Once Olson realizes this, however, he spends the last months of his life before succumbing to cancer building up resources that his Vice-President and successor Fiorello LaGuardia is later able to use to dismantle most of Long's power base.
• Unwanted Houseguest: So far there is no evidence that Doctor Litchfield is even aware of the Greater-Scope Villain who purposefully sent the Houseguest to him.

Western Animation

• Amphibia: Marcy was lied to by King Andrias about his true intentions to use the Calamity Box to conquer the multiverse, instead playing on her desperation to stay with her friends by telling her that they would use the box to simply explore the multiverse with her friends forever.
• In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Long Feng thought he was using Fire Nation Princess Azula to regain control of the Earth Kingdom capital, Ba Sing Se. In reality, she was using him to take control of it for the Fire Nation. By the time he realized she was playing him, she had already turned his own men against him. When he admits defeat, obviously impressed at her, she rubs salt in the wound by indicating this was all he was to her.
  Long Feng: You've beaten at my own game.
  Azula: Don't flatter yourself. You were never even a player.
• In one episode of Batman: The Animated Series, a businessman builds a casino... themed after The Joker. Joker is understandably incensed, and breaks out of Arkham to punish this act of image-theft by blowing up the joint. As Batman discovers, the businessman had spent too much on his building, and gave it a Joker-theme so the Joker would do just that, and then cash in on the insurance. Joker gets more incensed when Batman reveals this to him.
• Big Hero 6: The Series: In the Season 1 finale, Obake sends his minions after a case containing a failed prototype of an energy amplifier. It's actually worthless; the real reason is that he knew Hiro would become interested in making a real one, which he could then steal.
• Codename: Kids Next Door: Numbah 1 (Nigel Uno) in Operation: Z.E.R.O.. Father steals the "supposedly" inactive recommissioning module in an attempt to recommission Grandfather. All that was needed was a DNA sample from an active KND member, and knowing which KND operative would be so quick to come after him for the theft and to stop whatever plan that involves it, guess who suddenly became a key part of the plan?
• Danny from Danny Phantom becomes one of these almost every time he encounters Vlad Masters. Usually Vlad hints at what he's going to do right away, and Danny fails to understand and plays right into his hands anyway. Surprisingly, Valerie was an even bigger sucker than Danny — her entire ghost hunting 'career' was started by Vlad as part of a gambit and just became the gift that kept on giving for him and all his plans. She was NOT happy when she found out the truth.
• In Episode 7 of The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants, it's stated that Krupp and Melvin were using resident Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold Bo as a scare tactic to keep the other students in line, which in turn makes everyone in school fear him. This later backfires after a comic book made by George and Harold completely flips the script and turns Bo from a threat to a hero.
• The Fairly Oddparents:
  • Timmy is an unwitting pawn sometimes, most noticeably in "School's Out! The Musical", where he, along with Flappy Bob, are pawns in the pixie's Gambit Roulette.
  • Chester becomes this in "Fairy Idol" when Norm uses his friendship with Timmy to trick Cosmo and Wanda into quitting their jobs so he can steal their position and become his fairy godparent in their place.
• Where Sinedd from Galactik Football goes, intergalactic conspiracy is sure to follow.
• In Gargoyles, Xanatos was accustomed to using this trope: almost every major character was his pawn at one point or another. In one memorable episode, however, Xanatos is outsmarted and used as a pawn by one of his creations.
  Xanatos: Owen, I think I've created a monster.
• Gravity Falls has almost every character that interacts with Big Bad Bill Cipher become this, furthering his plans for Weirdmageddon with every trick he pulls. This culminates with him possessing Blendin Blandin to trick Mabel into giving him the space-time rift that was the final key to his plan, causing the aforementioned event.
• Kim Possible found herself in this position in So The Drama, when it was revealed that Erik was really a "synthodrone" working for Drakken. As Ron observed, "Drakken hasn't won, he played you." An even more direct case was in the episode "Hidden Talents", where Drakken created fake messages from Wade (as well as sending a virus to the real Wade) to get Kim to bring him one of Dementor's inventions. He also attempted to do it a second time after he forgot to tell Kim to get the adaptor plug, but the second time didn't work as well due to Wade debugging his computer.
• In Over the Garden Wall, the Woodsman is tricked by the Beast into maintaining the Beast's Soul Jar, which he believes contains his daughter's soul instead. He was also initially unaware that the eidelwood trees he was using used to be human children.
• Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated:
  • In episode 16, Pericles used Scooby's need to save the town to further his own plan to find the Cursed Treasure of Crystal Cove.
  • It's revealed that the entire cast has been this for the evil Nibiru Entity in order to release him from his prison.
• Sofia the First: Sofia is often this to Cedric in his attempts to take the Amulet of Avalor from her and use its power to take over Enchancia. Even her sister Amber is susceptible to this as shown in Season 1's "Princess Butterfly".
• South Park:
  • Both the Good and Evil characters in the Imaginationland trilogy, manipulated into war for a terrorist cell's plot to destroy collective imagination by getting both sides to kill each other, despite the narrative's full support for the Good characters starting in Part 2 as if the Evil characters were the Big Bads instead of the already-dead terrorists, when they weren't, despite what they literally are. However, the plot fails because the Good characters win the war and the Evil characters are imprisoned.
  • Stan, Kyle, and Scott Tenorman in "Scott Tenorman Must Die". To a lesser extent, the rest of the town was this to Cartman in that episode. The only thing he hadn't planned on was Chef actually taking the Chili Contest seriously and submitting an entry, though this simply means Cartman has delicious chili to eat while he explains his master plan.
  • This happens to Kyle again when Leslie tells him that Pc Principal killed Jimmy and that Randy is helping him to kill any objectors to his policies but in reality she'ss a ads who wants to get rid of Pc Principal so she can turn South Park against each so ads can take over the world.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: SpongeBob becomes one to Plankton in "Evil Spatula", by speaking through the Sizzlemaster spatula he gave him so he can trust him enough to tell the krabby patty formula.
• In Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the Kaminoans were this. They knew about Order 66 as they were the ones who implanted the control chips in the clones, but were told that it was a secret trump card against Dark Jedi that needed to be kept under wraps. As such, they sabotage Fives' attempt to reveal the truth and indirectly get him killed, and the Revenge of the Sith goes on without a hitch despite the best efforts of Master Shaak Ti.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil has an interesting variation in that a villain is used as a pawn for another: that being Ludo being used as a tool and puppet by Toffee of Septarsis. Also later reveals that Toffee was being used as a tool and puppet by Glossaryck. Toffee was unaware that Glossaryck was using him and Glossaryck was also using Toffee's plans to release Ecplisa and made Toffee a sacrifice in order for Ecplisa to be released.
• Challenge Of the Superfriends: In one of the more infamous plots from the series, the Legion of Doom collaborates with a group of Venusians to rework Earth's climate into something more tropical. To this end — in what may be the single most contrived Gambit Roulette in history — they enact a series of disasters, and the Superfriends play right into their hands when their attempts to stop them result in filling the atmosphere with steam, flooding the western hemisphere, and moving the Earth out of its orbit.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
  • In Season 4 of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003), both the turtles and the Well-Intentioned Extremist Agent Bishop are suckered royally by the Foot Mystics/Shredder's Heralds, resulting in the entire plot to Season 5.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): In early Season 5, Tiger Claw summons the demodragon Kavaxas to Earth in order to bring the Shredder, who was killed by Leo in the Season 4 finale, Back from the Dead, using a mystical talisman, the Seal of the Ancients, to keep him under control. By the fourth episode, "End Times," Kavaxas successfully resurrects Shredder... but Shredder is little more than a shambling corpse under Kavaxas' control, and destroys the Seal of the Ancients; as it turns out, Shredder's resurrection was one of three tasks Kavaxas needed to accomplish in order to bring about The End of the World as We Know It, and he was using Tiger Claw all along in order to accomplish those three tasks.
• Harold in Total Drama Action, when choosing to listen to Courtney and Duncan of all people, in order to vote off LeShawna, his love interest.
• In the Season 3 finale and Season 4 premiere of The Venture Bros., Brock Samson is an unwitting pawn to Molotov, and Molotov herself is an unwitting pawn to Gathers. Molotov puts a hit out on Brock for three of the top OSI assassins and pins it on the OSI, getting him to kill them so that her own assassin organization, the Blackhearts, would have no competition. However, she doesn't realize that that's exactly what Gathers wants her to do, as it would later lure Brock right into a trap set by Gathers to coerce him into joining the reformed SPHINX.
• In Xiaolin Showdown, Omi ends up playing right into Chase Young's hands in the second season, temporarily becoming his apprentice.
• Wakfu: Qilby is very good at making Unwitting Pawns out of everyone.
  • Anathar becomes one to Qilby. He's one of the Shushu and is only fighting on Qilby's side because of his alliance with Rushu, but Qilby baits Anathar into entering the fray so he isn't present for Qilby and Rushu betraying each-other, and therefore continues fighting for Qilby against Yugo and Phaeris long after Qilby's pact with the Shushus has expired.
  • The Mechasms and their prince Orgonax in the Backstory are ultimately this. They went to war against the Eliatropes and forced the latter into a Homeworld Evacuation because Qilby ripped out Orgonax's heart — this was Qilby's plan all along, to manipulate his people into being forced to become Space Nomads since Qilby wanted to traverse the stars.

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