Out Gambitted / Video Games

• The Assassin's Creed: Revelations "Lost Archives" DLC reveals that Warren Vidic and Lucy were working together all along to use Desmond to obtain the Apple for the Templars. This plan would have gone without a hitch if it didn't run counter to the plans of the Precursors. One of them, Juno, was aware that Lucy had betrayed the Assassins and, taking control of Desmond via an Apple of Eden, forces Desmond to kill Lucy to keep the Apple out of Templar hands.
• In Batman: Arkham City, Batman and Bane join forces to destroy all of the Titan drug in Arkham City. Bane actually wants it all for himself, and only worked with Batman because it would be easier to find everything this way. However, at the resolution of the quest, Batman reveals that he knew full well Bane's intentions and that he let Bane collect his half anyway so he could dispose of them in one go.
• BlazBlue: Continuum Shift plays with this trope in Arcade mode — while in Story mode Yuuki Terumi's scheme comes to fruition with few flaws, he needed to view the entire Continuum Shift to do it, and two characters in Arcade mode came dangerously close to obliterating his plans. Both act on the exact same flaw — Terumi's dependence on the Sword of the Godslayer, Kusanagi, aka Noel Vermillion.
  • Rachel Alucard knew fully well that Terumi was on the hunt for Noel Vermillion, the "Eye of the Azure", and in her penultimate fight, she encounters the girl and fights her to help her understand just what she is and what she's capable of. Even though Rachel explained things quite clearly, Noel did not want to accept reality, and that left a window for Terumi to come in, grab her, and toss her into the cauldron for her scheduled smelting.
  • Makoto Nanaya, empowered by her knowledge of events in Slight Hope, cut right on through and disabled Tsubaki so she wouldn't try to kill Noel, and right after took Noel down to break her mindrape induced trance. Logic dictates that Terumi had no choice but to pull Noel out of Makoto's grasp at this time — Makoto knew full well what Noel was, had every intention of explaining herself to Noel, and Noel was more inclined to believe her close friend than the vampire in the poofy dress. The resulting battle between Makoto and Terumi saw the latter chomping at the bit to kill the "little bitch" once and for all.
• The Gambit Pileup of Chrono Cross occurs when two factions compete on manipulating entire civilizations (and one of fiction's greatest Unwitting Pawns) to further their schemes across time and space, little realizing that they themselves are being played by a Chessmaster who nobody had accounted for, despite making little effort to hide himself and even having exposition-heavy chats with the protagonist on several occasions.
• In Command & Conquer Tiberian Dawn, Kane spends most of the GDI campaign outmaneuvering you, using his control of the media to paint your organization as a bunch of murderers, until your funding gets slashed and your leaders are bogged down by inquiries and investigations. Then a few missions later your commanding officer returns to reveal that the entire thing was a ploy to lure Nod into making a hasty offensive, so not only are you able to counterattack, but a surge in GDI funding has led to new toys like Orca VTOL craft and Ion Cannons.
  • In the Tiberium Wars expansion Kane's Wrath, Kane (of all people) manages to be outfoxed by Alexa Kovacs's False Flag Operation. It's the only time in the series we've seen him speechless.
• Disgaea:
  • From an embarrassing photo used to instigate a blackmail scheme, to allergy information to put a young boy in a dangerous situation, to non-integral minions bribed into disloyalty, to said young boy made angry enough to want to kill the blackmailer, Maderas' scheme to inherit the throne by killing Laharl was made one of these by Etna herself, and he never saw it coming up until it actually happened.
  • Seraph Lamington does the same by acting like a gullible fool around his right hand man, Archangel Vulcanus. Vulcanus believed Lamington was completely blind to his plan to conquer the Netherworld, Celestia, and the Human World, while it turned out Lamington was very aware of his schemes from the start, and in fact he was using Vulcanus' plan in order to lure Laharl and Flonne to Celestia so he could begin the last step in his own Gambit.
• Fire Emblem: Awakening:
  • Near the end of the game, the Big Bad, in his bid to release Grima, puts you into a situation where it appears you have killed the game's main character, as was foreshadowed in a dream sequence at the very beginning of the game. This leaves the villain with one hero dead, the other his puppet, and the legendary treasure in his possession... except that one of the parts of said treasure is actually a forgery, making it incomplete and thus insufficient for his plans, plus the Avatar purposely weakened their magic and faked their own possession BEFORE attacking Chrom to make it look like it had all played out like the dream. Cue Villainous Breakdown.
  • Then the Hierophant, who is the Grima from the Bad Future, jumps into the Awakening ritual, using his own power to resurrect the present Grima, effectively completing the plan and out gambitting the Avatar at the same time.
  • A villainous and tragic example occurs in chapter 9. Thanks to the knowledge the Hierophant gives him, Validar is able predict every single tactic the Avatar uses in their attempt to save Emmeryn and effortlessly counters them each time, ultimately resulting in the death of Phila and Emmeryn's Heroic Sacrifice.
• The Game Mod Blue Planet: War in Heaven for FreeSpace 2 has a magnificent example of this. Admiral Calder of the United Earth Federation thinks he's driven a Galactic Terran-Vasudan Alliance fleet into a trap by tricking Admiral Lopez of the GTVA into making rash actions to protect her ships. However, Lopez's entire fleet was nothing more than bait set out by Admiral Steele, the commander of all GTVA forces in the Sol system. He knew exactly what sort of gambit Calder would pull on Lopez, and when Calder's battered, exhausted force finally began to close the noose on Lopez's flagship GTD Carthage, Steele brings the GTD Imperieuse out of its Silent Running Mode in the Asteroid Belt — Calder thought he had left Sol system to resupply — and jumps out of subspace into the fray at the exact right location to start tearing Calder's ships to pieces with his main beam cannons from beyond the Earth ships' effective range. The "Tevs" lose a few small ships and a number of fighters, while the most elite task force in the entire United Earth Federation is almost completely destroyed save one ship in a matter of minutes. Also doubles as a Player Punch as the player is stationed on that one ship that makes it out alive only to emerge from subspace too close to the sun and doom the crew to an agonizing death...or so it seems.
• Golden Sun. Alex Chessmasters his way to attaining the ultimate power of the Golden Sun, only to find that The Wise One had foreseen the possibility of this happening and arranged events at the beginning of the first game such that Alex would be screwed over at the last possible second of the second game. Ouch.
• Jade Empire: The plot is a series of these, each getting sprung on by the next gambit. The ending even comes down to which one ultimately pays off: Yours, now as the Villain Protagonist (the bad ending for everyone else), The Big Good's (good ending for everyone except the Big Bad), and The Big Bad's (bad ending for everyone except for the Big Bad).
• Knight Eternal: Uno and Dylan spy on the queen of Zamaste in case she's trying to start another war with Halonia. The queen knew all along about their plan and has Adalia Primrose send a bomb to Halonia. While the bomb fails to kill anyone, the queen reveals Uno and Dylan's espionage to the public in order to create a pretext for war while Halonia is also gearing up for a war.
• Mass Effect:
  • Despite their efforts to prevent it, Aria, Liara, the Shadow Broker, and the various merc groups on Omega all get Out-Gambitted by the Illusive Man and Cerberus in between the events of Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3.
  • The Illusive Man has his plan to subvert Shepard in Mass Effect 2 by giving a false impression of Cerebus as the misunderstood good guys by ensuring the Normandy SR-2 was crewed by generally morally upright and sympathetic Cerebus members blow up in his face. By putting good people on the ship, they respond to being led by Shepard, especially the Paragon version, by promptly showing they're far more loyal to Shepard when Shepard tells their boss to get stuffed. Note this mass defection also includes the ship.
  • The Illusive Man himself gets outwitted by the Reapers. Although he came really close to fulfilling his plans to control them and use them to take over the galaxy, he ultimately ends up indoctrinated from prolonged contact with Reaper technology. It's heavily implied (but never directly stated) that he was actually indoctrinated before you met him and they were behind his plan to control them from the beginning as a way to cause infighting among galactic resistance; Javik tells Shepard they pulled a similar gambit successfully in his cycle.
• Mortal Kombat 11: at the climax of the Aftermath expansion's story, once Shang Tsung is done killing and betraying everyone around him and has seized both Kronika's crown and the hourglass, Fire God Liu Kang emerges from a time hole to confront him, looking not at all surprised, and calmly reveals he straight-up lied about being unable to intervene. Shang Tsung realizes that the Hourglass must have shown him this outcome, and by striking at the last moment, the sorcerer had deprived himself of all his resources, preventing any Xanatos Speed Chess. Even Shang Tsung's attempt to call the sacrifice of all his allies cold-blooded falls on deaf ears, as Liu Kang points out this timeline and everyone in it was already doomed, so he lost nothing by waiting until the last possible second.
• Towards the end of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Grodus proves to be a very intelligent foe. He intentionally leaves the last Crystal Star at the X-Naut fortress guarded by Crump, so that regardless of who wins the battle, he'll have all seven Crystal Stars and be able to open the Thousand Year Door. When he's confronted, he uses Peach as a hostage to keep Mario from attacking him. Even Bowser unexpectedly (and quite literally) dropping in doesn't matter, as he uses the distraction to take Peach to the Shadow Queen's coffin. Grodus awakens the Shadow Queen and it seems like he has won. And then it's revealed that Beldam actually lied to Grodus about the Shadow Queen being bound to serve the one who releases her, and the Queen promptly disposes of Grodus.
• Although primarily designed to be humorous, Peasant's Quest falls into this trope when the expected victory scene is replaced with a short speech by Trogdor informing the player that despite having met all of the said conditions for vanquishing the dragon, he is invincible and cannot be killed. Fortunately, you get a statue built of you because you've come closer than anyone else.
• Persona 5: The Phantom Thieves pull off a caper against The Conspiracy using their knowledge of the Metaverse. After figuring out that Black Mask had tricked them into going to the Casino Palace, the rest of the Phantom Thieves knew that Black Mask was going to try to kill Joker, though they weren't quite sure why yet. Black Mask believes that they've managed to bait the Phantom Thieves into giving up Joker, get him into police custody, and make it look like Joker committed suicide during questioning rather than pay for his crimes in jail. However, knowing Black Mask was going to try something, the Phantom Thieves came up with a plan. The Thieves used the fact that a Palace's distortions only affect one area to make Black Mask think he was in the real world while secretly transferring him to the Metaverse, making Black Mask kill a cognitive version of Joker rather than the real one. Then, they used spyware on Black Mask's phone to spy on him reporting his "success" to the Big Bad, all while the real Joker sat safe and sound in the real police custody, with Black Mask none the wiser. And, thanks to Sae Niijima being convinced by Joker to help the Phantom Thieves, Joker was able to exit police custody without being spotted. After all this, a television interview makes Black Mask realize that they've been tricked, and admits to being impressed at the Phantom Thieves pulling it off. What makes it even more impressive is that Joker had been drugged by corrupt police earlier, and didn't remember there even was a gambit until the last minute.
• In Portal 2, Wheatley of all characters manages to pull this on Chell and GlaDOS. He spends so much time building up a trap a few chambers ahead, all while trying and failing to act like it's not a trap, that nobody suspects the real trap was the Aerial Faith Plate that hurls them sideways into a Death Trap rather than ahead to the "real" trap a ways further. Even GlaDOS is taken aback by how well it was done, as it actually counted on her trying to take advantage of his idiocy to out-gambit him.
  Wheatley: Surprise! We're doing it now!
  GlaDOS: Okay, credit where it's due: for a little idiot built specifically to come up with stupid, unworkable plans, that was a pretty well laid trap.
• In every Resident Evil game except 5, Wesker always wins. Everything is set up to rebound to his benefit, even if he takes a hit or two along the way. Until 5, the only character to hand Wesker a defeat of any kind is Ada Wong, who pulls off a successful doublecross at the end of Resident Evil 4.
• In Sonic Adventure 2, Eggman pulls this on Sonic and Tails. Eggman kidnaps Amy, in order to get Sonic to give him the last Chaos Emerald. However, earlier, Tails made a fake, which would ultimately blow up the Eclipse Cannon and Eggman had learned earlier that they had two Emeralds on them, meaning one of them was a fake. Sonic plans to exchange the fake for Amy, to kill "two birds with one stone". However, Eggman tricks Sonic into getting trapped in an escape pod rigged to explode. What follows can only be expressed in dialogue.
  Eggman: You thought you could trick me with that fake Emerald?
  Tails: So... How did you know it wasn't the real one?
  Eggman: Because you just TOLD me, fox-boy!
  • The Final Mission starts with this. At the end of the Dark Story, Eggman had been defeated, but he still obtained the last Chaos Emerald and used it to power up the Eclipse Cannon. However, instead of a fully-powered cannon, it ends up activating Gerald Robotnik's ultimate middle finger to the world.
• Thuris from Soul Nomad & the World Eaters is said to be the smartest of the three world eaters. While he DOES do some pretty creative things with the fact that most people can't see him, he's simply playing against several other, much better, chess masters. Including one of the other world eaters.
• StarCraft and the expansion Brood War feature a massive Gambit Pileup, where Kerrigan ultimately Out-Gambits everyone, kills most of the characters, and only spares those not worth it because mercy is worse. And then it's revealed that she was out gambitted by someone else.
• It occurs often in Tears to Tiara 2 as two very capable commanders duke it out. Worth mentioning is that quite a few of Hamil's plans seems to be very accurately predicted by Izebel, who counters it handily and makes life very hard. She actually knew exactly what he's going to do because he told her before his memories were wiped and stashed away. When he finally defeats her, it was with a plan that she had insisted he not tell her.
• In The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, Georg Weissmann has orchestrated an elaborate plot to unlock the secrets of the Aureole, starting off by masterminding a coup in Liberl he can take advantage of regardless of whether or not it succeeds. A key component in his plan is sending a child assassin, Joshua Bright, on a mission to kill Cassius Bright, and banking on the hunch that when he inevitably fails, Cassius will try to adopt and reform him instead. Weissman can still exert some degree of Mind Control on Joshua, causing him to become an unwitting spy, and Weissman uses this knowledge to distract Cassius and keep him from interfering. However, towards the end of the two-game arc, Joshua manages to figure out a way to break the hold Weissman has on him, by counting on Weissman trying to rub in his dominance by forcing Joshua to murder Estelle, which triggers a hypnotic wedge Cassius and Kevin Graham had implanted in him for that very occasion.
• Given that The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings has a massive Gambit Pileup, this trope is in full effect as Chessmasters are pitted against each other — however, the winner being Letho came out of left field for most players, albeit at the behest of the Emperor of Nilfgaard.
• The player's interaction with Drakuru in World of Warcraft becomes this. While he initially uses you as a pawn in his schemes to breach Drak'tharon Keep and enable the Scourge invasion of the Gun'drak zone, things change once you get there. He tries to turn you into a ghoul and make you into his right hand, but the Knights of the Ebon Blade fake the transformation and have you secretly sabotage all of his plans while pretending to serve him. Eventually you manage to turn his secret weapon against him and he asks the Lich King for help, who kills him. This turns out to be because Arthas is working on a gambit of his own, and you're more important to it than Drakuru.