Out Gambitted / Anime & Manga

• This describes every match in Akagi; Akagi manipulates everyone around him (even people who are watching the entire Mahjong games from the outside) as they think they have him cornered.
• In Attack on Titan, the Central Military Police, who had tortured Pastor Nick to death and had been working for a shadowy conspiracy in order to kidnap Eren seemingly get the upper hand on Levi and co when they flush them out of their hideout and then enact a plan to kidnap Eren and Christa that goes off without a hitch. But then it turns out that Levi and the 104th were not only warned about their location being compromised, but also of the kidnapping plot: Eren and Christa were in a different area, completely safe. They'd kidnapped Armin and Jean disguised as Christa and Eren. Levi and co never even lost them.
• The Washimine yakuza clan ended up with this in Black Lagoon.
  • To start, they attempted to make an alliance with Hotel Moscow, with hopes that they'll take care of their enemies. Hotel Moscow sends Balalaika and her Badass Army to help them. Her brutal tactics against Washimine's other Yakuza rivals quickly spiral out of control and the Washimine head attempts to assassinate Balalaika... Big mistake. The head got his neck snapped by Balalaika herself and with this Casus Belli in hand, Hotel Moscow allies with the rest of the Yakuza Council against Washimine and begins destroying them piecemeal.
  • Yukio, a high school girl and the lead's last relative, takes control over the clan and manages to restore some semblance of fighting strength and strikes back, taking out the local head of Hotel Moscow... Who was one of Balalaika's hated rivals. Since Balalaika's troops are made of former Soviet Airborne Troops who fought at Afghanistan and can start and win World War III, Balalaika quickly fights with much more cunning and brutality, which almost completely destroy Washimine...
  • Once this is done, Balalaika uses the guise of her new alliance to murder the heads of the entire rest of the council, throwing the entire Tokyo underworld into all-out chaos and giving Hotel Moscow carte blanche to move in and seize control. Which had been Balalaika's objective all along, and she outplayed at least three other factions in the process. Once she realized that Balalaika had won the war, and Yukio's bodyguard and most faithful supporter Ginji died in a duel with Revy, Yukio chose to commit suicide rather than giving Balalaika the ultimate laugh. It wasn't better that Washimine clan itself suffered a civil war between those who supported Yukio and those who supported Chaka, which finished when Chaka was brutally slain by Ginji for kidnapping Yukio, beating her bloody, sexually humiliating her via stripping her almost naked, intending to sell her into sex slavery, and trying to use her as a human shield.
• In Bleach, Shinji explains his reversing ability to Aizen, but leaves out the fact that he can reverse each of the three dimensions individually. Just when Aizen has him "figured out", Shinji reverses only front and back, allowing Hitsugaya to stab Aizen from behind, which he never suspects because he's not reversed in the other two directions. Cut to Aizen revealing that he's been using Kyoka Suigetsu this whole time, and just made Hitsugaya stab Hinamori.
  • Aizen's on the receiving end of this trope several times during his end-game. The first and most obvious one is when Gin pulls a Starscream and tries to kill Aizen. Aizen has, of course, been expecting this all along, but Gin reveals he was the only shinigami that completely lied about how his powers worked while biding his time to figure out the weakness in Aizen's abilities. He proceeds to instantly kill Aizen with his Bankai's true power, making Aizen experience true fear for the first time in his life. Unfortunately, the Hogyoku grafted to Aizen's chest is able to save him and use that fear to help him evolve, but this means that Aizen's new form completely fails to adapt to Ichigo's Look What I Can Do Now! power-up later. After Aizen's defeat, it turns out that Aizen was also Out-Gambitted by Urahara from the start; while Urahara outsmarted and nearly killed Aizen several times in their fight, Aizen walked away victorious but failed to notice it had all been an elaborate distraction for a seal to lock Aizen^note The kido that Urahara had hidden inside of another kido back in that fight? Turns out the hidden kido was itself a distraction, and had another kido hidden inside of it. away when he inevitably grew too reliant on the Hogyouku and was rejected by it.
• In the Bokurano anime, Koeyemshi is trying to get Kana Ushiro to be the next Zearth pilot by putting mental pressure on her and threatening to force her brother Jun to do it instead if she refuses. However, Jun secretly asks his and Kana's friend Youko Machi to help, and she stops Koeyemshi by shooting him to death and then taking over the pilot system, de-contracting Kana and taking her place to use Zearth in the next battle. She dies as a result, and later Jun pilots Zearth and dies too, but Kana is ultimately safe.
• Subverted in the Case Closed anime. The Anti-Villain Akemi Miyano met up with Gin and Vodka, fellow members of the Black Organization, and told them they wouldn't kill her or they'd never know where she put the HUGE sum of money that she stole for them... but they shot her to death and took the key to the locker where she hid it. However, Akemi had the last laugh: said locker key was false, and she gave the real one to Conan (who had tried to disuade her from the robbery) before dying.
• In Death Note, Near and Mello beat Light by anticipating his "fake Death Note" plan and exploiting it for their own purpose.
• The Buu Arc of Dragon Ball is full of gambits and plans that end up being nullified by even superior gambits and plans. Probably the worst example was when Super Buu demanded seeing the "Strong Fighter"/ Gotenks (Goten and Trunks fused together) he was promised by Goku, and in an effort to buy more time Piccolo suggests that Buu amuse himself by terrorizing the people of Earth, knowing they can be revived with the Dragon Balls. Despite Majin Buu's previous rampage there were still billions of humans left on earth so Piccolo thought that with that many humans left it would take Super Buu at least a few hours to fly across the world and terrorize every single one of them. Super Buu instead kills every single human, with the exception of Mr. Satan, Tien, Chiaotzu and all those present on Kami's Lookout, in only two minutes and never left Kami's Lookout while doing it. All of humanity had essentially become a Sacrificial Lamb for the sake of giving Goten and Trunks just two more minutes of time to train. It's safe to say that Piccolo's plan of trying to outsmart Super Buu to gain more time backfired on him tremendously. Every time the heroes would come up with a plan of defeating Super Buu, Super Buu would just outplay them or outsmart them. Another example would be when Piccolo destroyed the only exit of the Hyperbolic Time Chamber forever trapping himself, Gotenks and Super Buu in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber. What does Super Buu do? He rips a hole through dimensions by screaming (though it should be noted that this had no planning whatsoever and he was just really angry at being denied sweets) and escapes the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, leaving Gotenks and Piccolo trapped inside while he turns the rest of the Z-Fighters into candy and then eats them. Probably the only person who was ever able to out-gambit Super Buu was Vegito. Who intentionally wanted to be absorbed by Super Buu and beat the shit out of him effortlessly to piss him off enough to make Super Buu desperate enough to absorb him. Super Buu instead turns Vegito into a jawbreaker. Vegito then uses his new form to kick Super Buu's ass. Vegito then points out that being turned into candy actually works as an advantage to him because he is extremely fast and far too small for Super Buu to hit and also retains all of his power because he's so much stronger than Super Buu.
• In Fullmetal Alchemist, Hohenheim manages to completely undo Father's transformation of everyone in Amestris into a philosopher's stone using a transmutation circle made from the shadow of the solar eclipse. And this was possible because Father's own Evil Plan required that solar eclipse. Furthermore, Hohenheim's allies undo the seal Father put on everyone else's alchemy by using Father's own transmutation circle.
• Harem Royale - When the Game Ends - has an exchange of plots between Serika and Ren that eventually results in the former's victory. First, Serika impersonates Asunaro and sends a request for a meeting to the fifth heroine to lure her out. Ren suspects a trap and sends someone else to the site of the meeting. However, Serika predicts this and is able to deduce Ren's identity and location. Not only that, but she later arranges a loss for Ren and convinces her to work with the others.
• Henkyou no Roukishi Bard Loen: In the end, Kladus ends up outgambitted by Bard Loen. He planned to pay Julchaga to steal the seal from Bard, and use it to confirm that his son Zeon is the actual prince, rather than Joulran, and the priest had told him the "Double Whirlpool" was a code meant only for Lady Aidra so it doesn't matter anymore. However, both were architected by Bard, who found the priest Vari first and told him about the situation, confirmed he had the seal first, and then sends it to Kladus via Julchaga to fall for the trap, while the "Double Whirlpool" is actually referring to the fingerprints that would confirm the identity of the child, which Kladus couldn't fake. Kladus' whole plan then falls through as the priest Vari is aware of it and they have a foolproof way to verify the identity of the real prince.
• This is how the main characters in Higurashi: When They Cry finally win. Rika, using her "Groundhog Day" Loop induced prescience and The Power of Friendship, successfully out-gambits the people trying to kill her.
• Hunter × Hunter:
  • During the Hunter Exam arc, Gon is engaged in a game of choice: he has to keep one of two candles lit in a windy room for longer than his examiner can do the same. As such, he picks the longer one, but the examiner actually has four candles, two of which are rigged to burn quickly. However, because it burns so strongly, he's able to leave it unattended to blow out his opponent's candle.
  • Another test involves the room where they must leave two people behind or take the long road. The team loses 50 hours in a gambling match just after the above example, so they have about 2 hours left, one route which only 3 of the five can travel down takes 5 minutes, the other route takes about 12 hours. The solution Gon sees is to choose the long route, break through the wall to the short route, then stop for just long enough to slide down the hill on a door...and the group make it to the finish with less than a second to spare.
• Shown in spades in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • In part 3, Dio launched a barrage of knives against Jotaro, which made him fall quite a long distance. Knowing Jotaro was probably Not Quite Dead because No One Could Survive That!, he decided to chop his head off with a stop sign. Too bad that's just what Jotaro wanted, because he got a free hit while Dio was closing in. Earlier, Jotaro successfully Out-Gambitted D'Arby in their poker game, where the stakes were the souls of him, Joseph, Polnareff, Avdol, Kakyoin, and Jotaro's mother Holly, alongside the secret to Dio's Stand — the boy that Jotaro choose to give the cards was working for D'Arby, and gave Jotaro weak cards, but Jotaro refused to look at them, making D'Arby think that he had switched them, and added too much to the stakes, with the possibility that losing would equal D'Arby's death from blabbing Dio's secret, playing a Batman Gambit that made D'Arby break down.
  • Every fight in JoJo, considering that it's a series where intelligence goes far beyond strength, results in one of the fighters being Out-Gambitted, such as Joseph's battle with Esdisi in part 2.
  • One of the earliest examples lies in part 1, when Dio planned to have Jonathan cut him in order to take hold of and freeze him. Jonathan Out-Gambitted him by cutting him at an area with the tip of his sword at the torch that allowed him to defrost himself.
  • Joseph Joestar's epic chariot battle against Wamuu. Every tactic one fighter used was immediately countered by the other, with Joseph barely prevailing in the end.
  • In Part 4, Angelo pulled a Batman Gambit, predicting Josuke would choose to break through a specific wall in his house to escape Angelo's Aqua Necklace. so he set a humidifier into overdrive behind that specific wall. Aqua Necklace successfully entered Josuke's body...and then Josuke revealed he had shredded and swallowed a rubber glove. One use of Crazy Diamond, and Aqua Necklace was trapped.
• Every major battle in Kingdom comes down to this, with each side trying their best to come up with innovative moves to blindside their opponents while trying to predict what their opponent was trying to do.
  • Perhaps the superlative example in-series occurs in the Gyou Campaign. Qin wants to invade Zhao, and the planned route would be through the mountains. Riboku sees through this and heavily fortifies the region, potentially turning the campaign into a costly war of attrition. So, Qin decides to surprise Riboku by attacking through a different route, aiming to capture the cities of Retsubi and Gyou. However, Riboku has seen through this, and purposefully leaves Retsubi weak while fortifying Gyou, hoping that the Qin get overconfident and bogged down, where he can capture back the weak Retsubi, bottling the Qin in and leisurely destroying them. Ousen, the Qin commander sees through this, and makes a new plan to conquer Gyou — creating a refugee flood that will overwhelm Gyou's resources sooner than expected by Riboku. The lord of Gyou then tries to control these refugees by only allowing in those on their ledgers, but Ousen has seen through this as well and has his spies sneak in by replacing injured members of the refugees and disposing of the originals. At the end of this, Qin wins. And this is just one part of one campaign in the story.
• Happened in Liar Game, where Akiyama was out-gambitted by Yokoya, who walked away with a huge amount of the winnings and left him in debt. However, Nao pointed out to Yokoya that even though he had won, he still lost the game, because he went back on his philosophy of complete dominance and instead turned to common cheating and stealing and three of his teammates had betrayed him.
• Lupin III:
  • The main character is the world's greatest thief, so he enjoys doing this to his enemies. And Fujiko. Sometimes it happens among his antagonists even without his involvement.
  • In Lupin III: Mystery of the Hemingway Papers, arms dealer Marces tried to pull a fast one over on rebel leader Consano, but it turned out Consano anticipated that and hired away Marces's Psycho for Hire to put a bullet through his former boss's heart.
• The "Kanna's Dad" arc of Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid involves this. Azad, a wizard that plots to exterminate dragons by manipulating rival factions to killing each other, attempts to get his hands on the Dragon Stone, an item which would allow him to force dragons to do his will (thus allowing him to make dragons kill each other just through brainwashing) by becoming a human colleague to Chaos-faction dragon Kimun Kamui, who possess a Dragon Stone and then take advantage of how Kimun's daughter, Kanna, is seeking his attention first by tricking her into destroying the stone absorbing its power and then by creating a conflict where she is needed to make a new Dragon Stone. However, Kanna would not only become suspicious of him after the destruction of the Dragon Stone, but also her exile due to the incident resulted in her heading to Earth to find Tohru, which led to her becoming used to modern technology and finding a Parental Substitute in Kobayashi (whose computer programming skills would make her a powerful magic user in the Dragon World ). Thus, as she agrees to make a new Dragon Stone for her father, Kanna sets up a plan to have Kobayashi and Tohru enter the Dragon World and, via Kobayashi being able to use magic in this world and a cell phone and tape recorder that Kanna brought with her, aide in exposing Azad's true nature and eventually defeating him.
• In Monster a hooker connects the dots and realizes that Johan Liebert has been committing a slew of murders for the past few years, so she attempts to blackmail him with this information. Johan had planned on this possibility and planted his hitman, Roberto, to act as her "boyfriend" days, maybe even weeks, ahead of time. It doesn't go well for her when she pulls a gun on Johan.
• Naruto:
  • Shikamaru Nara pulls this off quite a lot. All of his battles involve him making his opponent so sure of their victory that they inevitably screw up and fall to his masterfully-laid Batman Gambit.
  • Itachi's plan was to kill the Uchiha clan as ordered and then die by Sasuke's hands to make the Konoha village consider Sasuke a hero. However, right after Itachi dies in battle against Sasuke, Tobi manipulates Sasuke into his own agenda which instead makes him a wanted criminal in two villages.
  • Orochimaru trains Sasuke for three years to make him stronger so that he can take over Sasuke's body to become immortal. However, Sasuke sees through this and instead uses Orochimaru's technique against him to absorb Orochimaru into his own body instead.
  • Madara planned to manipulate Tobi for his Moon's eye plan by orchestrating the death of one of Tobi's teammates at the hands of another. However, Tobi decides to keep the Moon's eye plan for himself without ever intending to bring Madara back into the picture.
  • Obito does this to Madara again by becoming the Ten-Tails Jinchuriki after letting Kakashi destroy the seal that Madara placed inside his heart during their fight when Madara was trying to fully resurrect himself.
  • The above-mentioned plan by Tobi gets out-gambitted by Black Zetsu who ensures that Madara is brought back by leading Kabuto to Madara's corpse for the Edo Tensei ressurection and using Kabuto to blackmail Tobi into cooperating.
• In Negima! Magister Negi Magi, Negi out gambits Kurt Godel by simply not revealing that he has an informant from the future, which allows him to guess his rival's goals.
• In the case of Neon Genesis Evangelion, we have numerous plots going along side-by-side. We have SEELE who's trying to manipulate everyone into activating Instrumentality, we have Gendo trying to reunite with his wife Yui, the angels who plan on reuniting with Adam, and later Ritsuko who plots to kill Gendo and stop his plans due to how he used her. The one who emerges on top? Rei Ayanami, who undermines Gendo after he sees an end to both the Angel's plot (sort of) and Ritsuko's plot.
  • Rebuild of Evangelion's third film has a more straightforward example. Gendo has been going along with SEELE's plans thus far, setting off Near Third Impact and devastating the world even further. He successfully uses Fourth Impact as a distraction and while SEELE is gloating about their impending godhood he shuts down all of their life support systems. SEELE-01 bows out gracefully before dying.
• One Piece: The Dressrosa arc amounts to a gigantic gambit pile-up between Law and Doflamingo. Ultimately, the winner is a third party — the Straw Hats, who save Law (completely disregarding the fact that he ended their alliance in order to save them and kill Doflamingo, knowing full well he'd probably die in the process) and screw up Doflamingo's plan anyway. Considering their notorious reputation as a collective Spanner in the Works, nobody should've been surprised. Law, however, was counting on that and mocked Doflamingo for not seeing it coming despite knowing of the Straw Hats reputation.
• Kanba Takakura from Penguindrum. Several times. First his sister Masako kidnaps his brother Shouma and sets a Hostage Situation... to get a kiss from him, which she does. Later, when Himari dies for real, he fails to stop it... but Sanetoshi is able to do so, also roping Kanba in a Deal with the Devil. Which actually is the same Deal with the Devil that Masako took for the sake of her brother Mario. This means, Kanba is out-gambitted by Masako, who then is "defeated" by Sanetoshi, and then Sanetoshi plays both of them like violins, or their precious siblings (Himari and Mario) will die again. Ultimately, Kanba is so involved in Sanetoshi's plot and so desperate to save Himari for real, that he ends up having a Face–Heel Turn despite Shouma and Masako's pleas, and he can only get "free" of it via having himself Ret Goned (alongside Shouma, who does it to save Ringo from dying to Screw Destiny).
• Pretty Cure:
  • In Suite Pretty Cure ♪, the group Trio de Minor attempt to win back their Heel–Face Turn old friend Ellen by spooking her constantly, making her think that Hibiki and Kanede were being incredibly insensitive over her fear of ghosts. It seems to work when they're able to hold the duo's Cure Modules as ransom and gets Ellen to join them only for Ellen to grab the Modules and toss them back and rejoin her friends — she had already figured out they were the ones spooking her and used the opportunity to foil their plan.
  • In Healin' Good♡Pretty Cure, Guaiwaru sets up a Batman Gambit by tricking the Cures into killing King Byo-gen and assuming power as the new king, and manages to make the Cures suffer greatly. But it turns out that King Byo-gen had been expecting his plan and cooked up one of his own, and two episodes after his defeat, he absorbs Guaiwaru to reassume his true form.
• A masterful one happens in Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Madoka is in a tight spot since three Magical Girls (Mami, Sayaka and Kyouko) have died at different spots and only Homura is left to fight off Walpurgis Night, which will destroy the world if not stopped. Madoka can defeat Walpurgis if she makes a contract with Kyuubey and becomes a Magical Girl, but will end up turning into an even more powerful witch herself. In either event, the world will end and Kyuubey will harvest the witch's energy output. Faced with this situation, Madoka becomes a Magical Girl... but uses her wish to erase every witch from existence before they're born, including all witches born in the past and future, and even including the witch that she would have become, taking advantage of how Homura's time loops have actually let her get access to more and more raw magical power, thus Kyuubey is unable to deny her and she's able to make the system and Kyuubey her bitches. This ends up altering reality and effectively rewriting the whole Magical Girl system so that magical girls will no longer turn into witches, leaving Kyuubey to gather energy from sources other than the broken dreams of young girls like Madoka and her "teammates".
  • Another one happens at the end of the sort-of prequel Puella Magi Oriko Magica. So Kyouko, Mami and Homura have managed to kill Witch!Kirika and corner Oriko, and Homura finishes her off via destroying her Soul Gem after Kyoko impales her with her spear? No, Oriko won't be stopped by that. She will use her last moments to take a shard of Kirika's witch body and shoot it out of the witch's barrier... and fulfill her original "mission": killing Madoka Kaname via getting her Impaled with Extreme Prejudice with that shard. Oy vey.
• In Sailor Moon, this happens twice:
  • The title character pretends to pull off a Face–Heel Turn in the first season, greatly risking her own life to try getting into the Dark Kingdom to rescue her boyfriend and ally Mamoru. Kunzite, however, sees right through her and almost gets her killed.
  • During the Grand Finale, Neptune and Uranus are convinced that Galaxia cannot be defeated without some horrible angsty sacrifice that only they have the moral strength to make, and thus pull off a Fake Defector act that includes killing Pluto and Saturn (depriving Moon of two valuable allies right after the death of Princess Kakyuu and the Heroic Sacrifices of the Inners), attacking Moon herself and her remaining allies the Starlights (so she wouldn't suspect them, but also weakening her physically and devastating her emotionally) and ultimately take Galaxia on by themselves. Unfortunately, Galaxia was on to their plan from the start. The end result is that Neptune and Uranus are killed in front of Moon, Chibi-Chibi Moon and the Starlights without accomplishing anything.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! is this trope. Every duel seems to boil down to "Who will Out-Gambit who?". All players use their cards and strategies, putting a gambit against enemies and sometimes two duelists can be Out-Gambitted multiple times in the same duel. Yami Yugi's duels are almost always about how his gambit destroys his enemy's gambit.
  • Here's an example from 5D's done by Yusei. Yusei has on his field nothing except two face-down cards, against Greiger/Bommer's Flying Fortress SKYFIRE/Giant Bomber AIRRAID. If SKYFIRE's attack goes through, then Yusei will lose — and SKYFIRE allows Greiger to destroy a card on the field once per turn by discarding a card. Greiger decides not to destroy either one, speculating that it's actually a ploy to make him deplete his hand uselessly. It turns out he's right: the two cards are Wasteland Tornado and Limiter Break. Wasteland Tornado would allow Yusei to destroy a spell or trap card on the field; targeting it for destruction would be pointless because Yusei could activate it in response to the effect anyway. If Limiter Break is sent to the Graveyard, Yusei can Special Summon Speed Warrior to protect against SKYFIRE's attack. But since Greiger doesn't destroy either card, Yusei reveals that was covered, too: he activates Wasteland Tornado himself to destroy his own Limiter Break and get Speed Warrior to intercept the attack.
• Happens incredibly often in YuYu Hakusho. Technically Yusuke's death falls in this category, along with Jaki's attempt at turning Kuwabara to the Dark Side, possibly for a stronger host, Yusuke outwitting Goki (with little difficulty) and then later Hiei, back when they first met, Kurama's fight with Roto, Kurama outwitting Kaito (although that was technically supposed to happen), Sensui and Toguro both getting their way despite the team's actions... there's also the fight between Yusuke and Kibano, who used a mask that shut out the other senses to focus on sensing spirit energy and used it to fight Yusuke in the dark. The mask however is also the reason Kibano was unable to see or smell the cigarette Yusuke put on him to find him in the darkness.