Xanatos Gambit / Fan Works

• Age (In)appropriate: Spike seems to be operating within this trope as every outcome of his actions seems to benefit him in the end.
• Arc-Ved Protagonists: While Duels Decide Everything, often the outcome may not matter, at least not when Absurdly High-Stakes Game is averted. Instead, what happen during the duel may be what a certain party needs to happen. Once that happens, win or lose, that Duelist got what they wanted.
• (æ)mæth: The sequel story (æ)donai starts with an attack on Maiami City that takes the combined efforts of the Lancers—and a few other Duelists—to put down entirely. It's only when the dust has settled that it's revealed the entire objective of the attack was a diversion so that Yuya and Yuzu could be kidnapped.
  • The second arc deals with an "Operation Solitaire" that turns out to be a series of simultaneous attacks on the entire Akaba family. All three of them are staged to such an extent that each of them provides a net benefit, regardless of whether the Duel is won or lost: Himika and Reira are pinned down by a sniper and a bomb that turns out to be an EMP, which prevents any warnings from being sent out; Reiji himself is beset by a team of Duelists that physically assault him to the point of putting him in traction, while Leo falls victim to a psychic attack on the very night before he's set to be extradited for his upcoming war crimes trial.
• Avenger Goddess: Ares believes that he has created one by arranging for Sekhmet to be awakened while Diana is in Wakanda to fight her; regardless of which wins the fight, it will end with a goddess dying in combat, thus massively empowering Ares. Bast outmaneuvers him on this, instead intervening so that Sekhmet is banished from Earth back to Heliopolis, ending the fight in a draw.
• Avengers of the Multi-verse does this with Modula's plan in the first story, with him even saying that part of him was hoping the initial attack would fail. If the initial invasion succeeded, he'd have destroyed Titan and Earth would be at his mercy. If the attack was repelled somehow, which is what ended up happening? He secretly had larger Rift Gate generators sent through to other parts of Earth, and with the confirmation that they can now make Rift Gates that stay open as long as they desire, they could now send the entire Mutradi fleet through to Earth's orbit.
• The Bridge (MLP): The Big Bad, Bagan, pulls one that makes up the entirety of the "Enjin Arc". Sending away one of his soldiers, Monster X, to the Equestria Girls' world after he started turning into Kaizer Ghidorah, he deploys one of his aspects called Enjin to kill X/Kaizer and take his powers. It turns out this was partly a ploy to get the attention of the Big Good, Harmony, and bring her realm close to his so he could attack her directly since she's the only being on a similar power tier to him. Outcome 1: Enjin succeeds in killing Monster X and the sirens allied with him and Bagan succeeds in killing Harmony, and Enjin will drain them of their power and bring it back to enhance Bagan, who's just removed the one character who had a good chance at stopping him. Outcome 2: Enjin succeeds but Bagan fails, so Enjin still get the power-up, Bagan can just teleport himself back to his realm to avoid the possibility of Harmony killing him, and the damage to Harmony's realm inside the Tree of Harmony from two Physical God tier characters fighting in it will sever her connection to Equestria. And Outcome 3: Both fail, but damage is still done to the Tree of Harmony and without any links between Enjin and his master, a stronger Monster X will just think he killed an outside threat and will still loyally serve Bagan after his master plays Benevolent Boss and heals him after the fighting. The last part happens and no one is the wiser.
• Courtney and the Violin of Despair: The only two possible outcomes in the cliff diving challenge are for Courtney to (a) jump and die; or (b) not jump, and be publicly humiliated. Both outcomes serve the interests of the Violin spirit.
• Cut My Life Into Pieces, This Is My Last Resort: Hawk Moth sets one in motion after becoming Scarlet Moth and Akumatizing Volpina. If the Akumas he sends out actually manage to take Ladybug and Chat Noir's Miraculous, he wins, if they fail, they still serve their purpose as a diversion from Volpina. He later turns Volpina and Chat Noir's fight into another one: if Volpina manages to take his Miraculous, he wins, if Chat Noir defeats her, she's still managed to anger him enough for him to Akumatize him into Chat Blanc, indirectly giving Scarlet Moth his Miraculous anyway and allowing him to use him against Ladybug. It nearly works, only failing due to him not expecting Marinette to not actually be dead, and therefore able to calm Chat Noir down before he gets Akumatized.
• Dragon Age: The Crown of Thorns: The modus operandi of the Wise Prince protagonist, although he's definitely not the only one who uses them. Notable ones include setting up safeguards to whether or not his plan to fake Trian's death works in the early chapters and building on them when dealing with the succession mess.
• Evangelion 303: Gendo ordered that Asuka tested the NF-14 model, thinking that: if she recovered, they would have four pilots operational again; and if the aircraft crashed, it should return Instrumentality to schedule.
• Forward (Peptuck): The corrupt Alliance cop Womack forces Mal and his crew into one of these by giving them an offer they can't refuse: either they take out an illegal organ-growing operation whose operator is disagreeing with Womack, or he'll have the crew arrested as the organ smugglers, as his superiors are breathing down his neck about capturing someone to blame for it all. In reality, he's also running a second con underneath it: if Mal and his crew take out the smuggling operation, it will work out fine, but if Serenity's crew fails, they'll scare the smugglers into packing up and moving shop off the planet, which gets them out of Womack's hair anyway. Either way, he wins. It almost works too, but the Operative's unexpected assault on the same organ-growing operation throws a large Spanner in the Works and sends the whole thing pear-shaped.
• Guardians, Wizards, and Kung-Fu Fighters: Tarakudo pulls a masterful one in Chapter 22. He forces Oni masks on Jackie and Viper and sends them to attack the other heroes as a distraction while he steals the Hana Fuda cards. If he obtains them, the heroes can't use them to find or remove any of the other masks. Even if he fails, it will keep the heroes, especially Jade and Will, from realizing that he's not really bothered by losing the masks (as his long-term plan involves them all ending up in the same place anyway). And if the Guardians and their allies suffer any casualties from the fight, it's merely a bonus. No matter what happens, he benefits.
• HERZ: The Children’s plan was failure-proof. If SEELE did not attack they won. If SEELE managed completing nine MP-Evas and attacked they won because they could hijack them and use them to eliminate SEELE and the Evangelion technology.
• The Institute Saga: Trope Namer David Xanatos himself pulls a small one of these when he teams up with Superman to revive three deceased gargoyles.
• J-WITCH Series:
  • In "Stolen Heart and Mask" when they learn that Jeek has stolen the Heart and final mask, Phobos and Tarakudo note that they win either way. If Cedric and Wong (with Tarakudo along to sell the illusion that it's their last chance to get a mask) win, they can easily storm Section 13 and reclaim the other masks. In the more likely scenario that the heroes reclaim the Heart and mask, they'll bring it to Section 13 and inadvertently release the Oni.
  • In Season 2, this is how Nerissa and Drago are treating the hunt for the Demon Chi — they don't need it for their plans, but the power boost would be helpful, and even if the heroes collect it all before they can, that removes a wild card from the playing field. Plus, Nerissa is sure she can take advantage of whatever Uncle does to contain the chi.
  • Nerissa and Drago's dream attacks on the Guardians in "Nightmares and Daydreams" are another example. While they'd be happy to harm the girls through their dreams, that's just a cover for accessing Jade's memories so that Nerissa can study her and figure out what makes her so special.
  • In "Jewel Hunt", Nerissa wants to gain Jade's powers in addition to her own, so she infuses them into Will's Astral Drop when she makes it an Altermere as an experiment to see if someone can handle having both powers, but even if that fails she's making her moves on Susan as a backup. And all of this also serves as a distraction for Drago to sneak into Section 13 and steal the Tiger Talisman and replace it with a counterfeit.
  • In "Return", Nerissa and Drago both admit that it doesn't matter whether the Knights do as they're told and use the Fire Demon Chi on Elyon's adoptive parents or instead decide to use it on Phobos, since all that's really needed is for them to create a big enough distraction for the Guardians and other heroes that the two of them can carry out their real goals of stealing the Heart of Meridian from Elyon and freeing Shendu with the Dragon Teeth.
• Jackie Chan Adventures: Olympian Journey: While Eris' goal is to gather the essences of all the other gods in order to dominate the planet, she's not in a rush to do so, as just the chaos of all the fighting over the essences is enough to make her more powerful. As she puts it to her Quirky Miniboss Squad, she wins in the long run no matter how the individual fights turn out.
• Mare of Steel: General Zod brainwashes the Flim-Flam brothers and sends them to attack Ponyville with a Humongous Mecha in order to "test the waters" — if they succeeded, he would have had an unstoppable weapon at his disposal, and if they failed, he'd at least get a look at what he's up against.
• Megami no Hanabira: Lucifer really doesn't care who wins the race for the Demon Summoning Server: he has all the evidence he needs to expose the Flock's misdeeds and ruin God's reputation, and even if they did somehow manage to beat all the Tamers and claim the Server, crushing them would be a simple task. If a group of Tamers claim the Server, they'll have proven by virtue of being there that they are worthy of being his champions, and after everything the Flock did it's unlikely they have high opinion of God. If by some lunacy they refuse him, no problem: as mentioned, he's ruined God's reputation by this point, which is what matters. If they get pissy and decide to attack him? Hah.
• Miraculous! Rewrite: The villain's plan in "Prime Queen" is effectively this, as they akumatize Nadja Chamack specifically to exploit her desire to expose Mayor Andre's corruption to all of Paris. While she fails to retrieve the Ladybug or Black Cat, she succeeds in that goal, priming Paris to face the fallout of that scandal. Monarcha gloats to their cohort about this, rubbing in Gabriel's face how he never thought to play the long game.
• The New Adventures of Invader Zim:
  • In Episode 3, at Norlock's prodding, the Tallest set up Zim and Tak's competition for control of Earth as this — if Tak wins, Zim finally dies. If Zim wins, they appoint him ruler of a completely out of the way planet, keeping him out of their hair. And either way, they add another planet to the Empire. This falls apart in Episode 17 when they tell Zim the truth of his "mission" in an attempt to keep Project Domination from him, causing him to turn on them.
  • At the end of Episode 16, Norlock lectures Zim on this trope, how having multilayered plans are the best way to achieve victory while explaining that the episode's events were one — if the monster army he summoned successfully destroy the city, that's great, but even if they don't, they keep everyone distracted from the theft of the Meekrob crystals.
• New Chance: Humorously parodied with Minato's advice on how Iruka can get stronger for the Jonin trials. The advice? Sexually harass Anko. Minato's reasoning being that trying to escape her wrath will increase his skills since he'll have to use and improve all of them and develop some more to do it. If she catches him, he learns how to deal with torture and increases his pain threshold.
• A New Chance Series: Giovanni engages in one: He encourages Jessie, James, and Meowth to pursue Ash, but they must provide him with information on where he is. If they can capture Pikachu and the Eon Duo, good. If they can't, he can still know where Ash is, in case he wishes to take him out, or just stay a step ahead of him. He couldn't, however, anticipate the trio quitting.
• Queen of All Oni: In the second half of the story, Jade turns the hunt for the masks into one of these — she's more interested in the Teachings in order to increase her power, but is still sending her minions after the masks to keep the heroes distracted for as long as possible.
• Shadows Awakening:
  • As the Phantom explains, the hunt for the Dark Treasures was a win for him regardless of the outcome, as no matter who managed to gather all three items, as long as they all ended up in the same place, he could use their combined power to revive himself.
  • The Queen's invasion of San Francisco during the Final Battle by opening multiple portals at several points of the city. If the heroes decide to keep closing the portals, Jackie is left alone against an enemy he certainly cannot defeat; if the heroes remain with Jackie, then nobody will close the portals and San Francisco will be flooded with Shadowkhan.
• Sonic X: Dark Chaos: The entire Metarex War is this for Maledict, as he's secretly The Man Behind the Man for both Tsali and the Metarex. If Tsali lost, Maledict would just build up the Metarex as a proxy army to aid him in the future; if Tsali won, than he obviously was the better fighter and would also aid Maledict in the future in gratitude for giving Tsali his revenge. Only his servant Venus' betrayal and Sonic's intervention causes the gambit to fall apart.
• Son of the Sannin:
  • Orochimaru has his subordinates kidnap Jiraiya and Tsunade's children, knowing that they carry powerful bloodline limits for him to harvest (as well as to take advantage of Naruto's Big Brother Instinct and lead him into a trap set by Akatsuki). Having anticipated that Jiraiya and Tsunade would stop at nothing to get them back (and they succeeded in the end), he had Kabuto extract enough DNA samples from them for his experiments. And it pays off, as two years later he has fully grown clones of them with their abilities as his personal servants.
  • To divert attention from Jiraiya's forces during the raid to Root's headquarters, Danzo sends some of his minions to kidnap specific targets: Hanabi, Rin, Hagane, Shiro and Shizuka. While the main goal was to buy him more time to escape to the Land of Sound, he hoped to get at least one of them to harvest their powers for himself.
• In the Star Wars Rebels fanfiction A Sword to Pass, it appears that Ursa is pulling one on Ezra. After waking from his injures received from protecting children of her clan she offers him a jedi holocron, in exchange for him to leave Krownest and never speak to Sabine {who has been injured trying to protect him from the head of their house} again. Or take a homemade beskar knife. Ezra takes the knife but based on Sabine reaction to seeing it there is some kind of special meaning to it. So, Ursa is getting something out of the exchange one way or the other.
• Tamers Forever Series: Daemon executes a minor one when he uploads a virus into his troops, which means that either A) the Tamers/DigiDestined try to absorb the fallen troops' data, and are infected by the virus or B) They don't absorb the data, allowing his own troops to absorb the data and thus grow stronger. Thus making a battle of attrition impossible for his enemies to win. He manages another one earlier, perhaps inadvertently, sending Doumon to obtain the power of Chaos so he can break out of the Dark Ocean and take revenge on everything. Though it inevitably fails, Doumon's own data is enough when added to the rest he's been collecting to allow him to escape the Dark Ocean and go after Takato himself.
• Ultimate Sleepwalker: The New Dreams has Sleepwalker trapped in Rick Sheridan's mind as part of a larger gambit by his Arch-Enemy Cobweb. If Sleepwalker had been killed at any point during the plan, then Cobweb could have proceeded with the rest of it without any more trouble. On the other hand, Cobweb had it rigged up so even if Sleepwalker survived, it only allowed the next part of the plan to begin anyway. Cobweb puts in so many failsafes that Sleepwalker only finally manages to derail his plan at the very last minute.
• Ultimate Spider-Woman: Change With The Light Jack O'Lantern launches one of these to set up his true Evil Plan. The beauty of it is that it would work no matter which crime syndicates were crippled, since destroying Philippe Bazin or Crimewave would have suited him just as well. Even if the gang war had petered out, he wouldn't really have lost anything, since he'd already covered his tracks.
• Unbreakable Red Silken Thread: Defines Heather to a T and is one of the main reasons people tend to end up in her debt one way or another. Between high school clique politics and a lifetime of dealing with her mother she is a master of this.
• The White Wolf of Westeros: Due to how hard it is in A Song of Ice and Fire to control things, a xanatos gambit is difficult to do in any permutation of the world. However, thanks to a very localized encounter, Euron Greyjoy ends up pulling this off. Context: Stannis is sailing north with Geralt of Rivia (stuck in their world for the time being) and the Stark daughters to negotiate with Robb Stark for a larger army to face the Lannisters. Euron just happened to run into the ship with his mini fleet and attacks it. If he succeeds, he's then killed or captured a king claimant and can use that as political power for his favor. However, if he fails, he still didn't join the fight himself, and can then bring the information of what Stannis and the Starks are up to and use that to work his political aims. Either way, Euron's attack was the pretense to sneak into King's Landing and begin working his machinations.
• Young Justice: Darkness Falls: Lex Luthor gives Superboy a booklet with "all" the information on the plans the Light has. If any hero fails to stop their plans shown in the book, well then all the better for the Light. If they do manage to put some of them to rest, then it weakens the strengths of many of Luthor's partners, making him better poised to take over Light operations thanks to his own private resources. The more resources removed also gives Luthor more space to have a clean bill as he prepared for his next goal: becoming president. And more to the point, the whole reason he gave them the plans in the first place was to undermine Darkseid's plans for earth. Regardless of the outcome, Luthor would've gained from the result.

---