You're close. Batman Gambit is when you rely on intimate knowledge of a person's personality/weaknesses to design a plan that they can't help but fall into. It depends on the victim(s) behaving as predicted for its success.
Xanatos Gambit is a plan where all predictable outcomes lead to a victory of some sort for you. It doesn't necessarily rely on predicting your opponents' behavior so much as rigging things so whatever they do is a win.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"The thing about the two tropes is that without a character explaining the situation step-by-step an individual example can be interpreted different ways. But a Xanatos Gambit isn't "I have a backup plan" but it is that either outcome is to their advantage. I think that if Batman was able to stop Ras' Al Ghul and the monorail from even taking off he would have alerted Gordon to not destroy the tracks. Once he reached the point of no return it did become a distraction to keep Ghul occupied. That's really more Xanatos Speed Chess anyway, two people trying to out plot each other.
Except that Ra's plot was the same for the entire duration that he, directly or indirectly, fights Batman: fry the water at the tower. Bruce's plot was essentially letting Ra think that Bruce was going to be the only thing standing in. It probably didn't matter if he won the fight or not, but what would determine if it really was a Xanatos Gambit would be if Batman had some insurance plan in case Gordon couldn't get to the tower, let alone drive stick. Of which we don't know, as far as I remember from the movie, so I don't think it qualifies. IMHO, the entire thing was more like a Xanatos Uh Oh Look Behind Ploy or whatever.
As for the Batman Gambit example I don't recall enough to be sure.
Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?"You're close. Batman Gambit is when you rely on intimate knowledge of a person's personality/weaknesses to design a plan that they can't help but fall into. It depends on the victim(s) behaving as predicted for its success." - Fighteer
So, "real plan works on convincing people your plan is something else" is only a specific variety of this, then?
In any case, I'd say my example of it still applies though.
No, that's more like Kansas City Shuffle. A plan that relies on the protagonists believing you're trying to trick them, but them believing that is what makes them fall for the real plan. It can be a Batman Gambit if a reasonable person could be expected to see through it, but you're counting on the particular victim having a weakness that blinds him/her to the truth.
One example of this would be in Order Of The Stick, during the Battle for Azure City. Redcloak cooks up a plot to make decoy Xykons to confuse the defenders. He makes it look like a classic Shell Game — which decoy is the real Xykon — but it takes Haley to point out that none of them is real; Redcloak is relying on the Lawful Good paladins playing the game as presented and not looking for a trick behind the obvious trick.
edited 14th Feb '11 2:31:24 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"So, Kansas City Shuffle is what I was thinking of? The name hardly makes it that apparent, I'd suggest something a little descriptive... doesn't have to be Exactly What It Says on the Tin either, of course, but I'd think it could use a more descriptive title than it has now. o.o
EDIT: Do my examples still apply though?
edited 15th Feb '11 7:06:00 AM by neoYTPism
To my knowledge, Kansas City Shuffle is a preexisting term. An interesting one at that. It could use an Adjectivy Noun redirect tho.
edited 15th Feb '11 7:20:43 AM by SilentReverence
Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?We tried doing that a while back and got nowhere. Feel free to bring it up again in TRS. We were also considering making a Misdirection Gambit trope for the more generic form of Evil Plan, but that also failed to take off.
Neo, I think your example does properly belong in Kansas City Shuffle.
Let's recap for the interested.
- Evil Plan: Any generic plan hatched by the badguys.
- Xanatos Gambit: A plan where any predictable outcome results in a victory of some sort, even if it isn't the main objective. Generally foiled by the Spanner in the Works or Take a Third Option.
- Batman Gambit: A plan that relies on anticipating its victims' actions for success. If they don't behave as predicted, it fails.
- Kansas City Shuffle: A plan that relies on a surface trick that the victims think they've seen through, which sets them up for the real trick. Can be foiled by someone being Too Dumb to Fool or seeing through the deeper trick.
- Xanatos Roulette: A plan where even the unpredictable outcomes result in victory. In short, like Xanatos Gambit but with things taken into account that the perpetrator couldn't possibly predict. Begins to look like an Ass Pull or Villain Sue if done poorly.
- Xanatos Speed Chess: Any of the above, improvised on the fly due to a changing situation. An Indy Ploy can often resemble this, especially after I Meant to Do That.
- Thirty Xanatos Pile Up: A situation where multiple players are all running gambits of various sorts against each other, with the winner taking all.
edited 15th Feb '11 7:43:05 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Batman Gambit
Xanatos Gambit
Supposedly the Batman Gambit relies on the idea that convincing people part A is your plan and having people react to it accordingly is what makes part B work. This isn't very clear from the description, at least not until the fifth paragraph, but I'm guessing that's the gist of it.
The Xanatos Gambit, however, is about having all paths lead to victory.
So, for a couple examples, I recently added one of each to the Batman Begins trope list
based on that idea. I was going to ask those familiar both with Batman Begins and with the two tropes if these are good examples of it.
Each example arguably overlaps with the other trope (my Batman Gambit example might have involved an alternative plan in case the bridges were just raised without police being sent to the island, and my Xanatos Gambit involves Batman pretending to be trying to stop the train; if he hadn't convinced Ra's al Ghul this was his idea the movie doesn't say if he might have suspected Batman had a backup plan) but I'm guessing from my current interpretation of the tropes that they fit.