History Main / BatmanGambit

* [[BatmanGambit/FilmsAnimated Films - Animated]]
* [[BatmanGambit/FilmsLiveAction Films - Live Action]]

* BatmanGambit/LiveActionFilm

* BatmanGambit/LiveActionFilms

* [[BatmanGambit/FilmsLiveAction Films - Live Action]]

See also ManipulativeBastard, for the character most likely to attempt/pull these off; UnwittingPawn, for the people who unwittingly help the Gambit along, and SpannerInTheWorks[=/=]UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom, for the people who [[DidntSeeThatComing unintentionally send it spinning into disaster]]. Also see, EvilCannotComprehendGood for a common reason why villainous attempts fail.

See also ManipulativeBastard, for the character most likely to attempt/pull these off; UnwittingPawn, for the people who unwittingly help the Gambit along, and SpannerInTheWorks[=/=]UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom, for the people who [[DidntSeeThatComing unintentionally send it spinning into disaster]].

->'''Sterling''': Of course, you know your entire {{plan}} depended on me being a self-serving utter bastard.\\

A complicated plan that revolves entirely around people doing exactly what you'd ''expect'' them to do. This trope relies heavily on FlawExploitation manipulating, although it can work with virtues instead of "flaws" just as easily. Sometimes the flaw is that the villains are so predictable that they'll [[VillainBall take the first chance they have]] [[DickDastardlyStopsToCheat to do something mean and underhanded]]. Other times, the flaw is that the heroes are [[ChronicHeroSyndrome so heroic that they'll act for the greater good without even thinking about it]]. A particularly GenreSavvy person will recognize the fact that [[TheGoodGuysAlwaysWin heroes always win]] -- and design a plan [[NiceJobBreakingItHero based on the assumption that they will succeed]].

The key to making a Batman Gambit work is by carefully guiding and manipulating the motivations of those involved, so that the "obvious" course of action to them is to do what will make the gambit work and it never occurs to them to do things that would ruin the gambit. Because of the presence of this obvious failure mode, anyone who tries to pull off a Batman Gambit and fails often just ends up looking like a fool.

In short, if there is ''any'' reasonable action the pawns could take that would ruin the entire scheme, then it's a Batman Gambit. Even so, the essence of a truly successful Batman Gambit is to make it appear that they do ''not'' have that option in the first place. Or, better yet, making inaction far too costly to be seriously considered, such as by raising the stakes so high that failure to act would be as or even more disastrous than doing what the mastermind has forced or tricked the pawns into doing (if the mastermind benefits from either outcome, rather than merely using one to achieve the other, then this becomes a XanatosGambit).

See also ManipulativeBastard, for the character most likely to attempt/pull these off; UnwittingPawn, for the people who [[DyingLikeAnimals unwittingly help]] the Gambit along, and SpannerInTheWorks[=/=]UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom, for the people who [[DidntSeeThatComing unintentionally send it spinning into disaster]].

Named after {{Batman}}, who typically uses these as a way of showing off his CrazyPrepared superpower.

Contrast with the MacGuffinDeliveryService, and the failed attempt, SpringtimeForHitler. Also see IndyPloy for the exact opposite. A gambit that relies almost entirely on misdirection is a KansasCityShuffle. If things do go wrong, but the person keeps adjusting things so that Plan A works anyway, he's playing XanatosSpeedChess. TheTapeKnewYouWouldSayThat is a subtrope.

This trope relies heavily on FlawExploitation manipulating, although the term "flaw" is used very loosely here. Sometimes the flaw is that the villains are so predictable that they'll [[VillainBall take the first chance they have]] [[DickDastardlyStopsToCheat to do something mean and underhanded]]. Other times, the flaw is that the heroes are [[ChronicHeroSyndrome so heroic that they'll act for the greater good without even thinking about it]]. A particularly GenreSavvy person will recognize the fact that [[TheGoodGuysAlwaysWin heroes always win]] -- and design a plan [[NiceJobBreakingItHero based on the assumption that they will succeed]].

The key difference between the XanatosGambit and the Batman Gambit is that while the former is structured so that any reasonable outcome will work to the advantage of the gambit instigator (and is thus "foolproof") the Batman Gambit does have a failure condition. Indeed, this failure condition will often be quite obvious and foreseeable to the audience, who have the benefit of perspective and objectivity. The victims of the gambit, however, do not enjoy those luxuries.

[[quoteright:350:[[WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/batman_tells_his_gambit_6556.jpg]]]]

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[[quoteright:350:[[{{Batman}} http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/batman_tells_his_gambit_6556.jpg]]]]

-->-- ''{{Series/Leverage}}'', "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK0BXucd10A The Second David Job]]"

* [[{{BatmanGambit/FilmsAnimated}} Films - Animated]]
* [[{{BatmanGambit/FilmsLiveAction}} Films - Live Action]]

* {{BatmanGambit/Sports}}

* {{BatmanGambit/Theater}}

In short, if there is ''any'' reasonable action the pawns could take that would ruin the entire scheme, then it's a Batman Gambit. Even so, the essence of a truly successful Batman Gambit is to make it appear like they do ''not'' have that option in the first place, or better yet making inaction far too costly to be seriousy considered, such as by raising the stakes so high that failure to act would be as or even more disastrous that doing what the mastermind has forced or tricked you into doing (if the mastermind benefits from either outcome, rather than merely using one to achieve the other, then this becomes a XanatosGambit).

[[caption-width-right:350:Batman [[NiceJobFixingItVillain got the Joker to save him]] simply by counting on the Joker [[TheOnlyOneAllowedToKillYou to be himself]].]]

[[caption-width-right:350:Batman [[NiceJobFixingItVillain got the Joker to save him]] simply by counting on the Joker to be himself.]]

* [[{{BatmanGambit/Comics}} Comics]]

* [[{{BatmanGambit/FilmsAnimated}} Films- Animated]]
* [[{{BatmanGambit/FilmsLiveAction}} Films- Live Action]]
* [[{{BatmanGambit/Literature}} Literature]]

* [[{{BatmanGambit/Sports}} Sports]]

* [[{{BatmanGambit/Theater}} Theater]]

'''Nate''': Mmm, yeah, [[SarcasmMode that's a stretch]].

'''Nate''': Mmm, yeah, that's a stretch.

->'''Sterling''': Of course, you know your entire plan depended on me being a self-serving utter bastard.\\

In short, if there is ''any'' reasonable action the pawns could take that would ruin the entire scheme, then it's a Batman Gambit.

The key difference between the XanatosGambit and the Batman Gambit is that while the former is structured so that any outcome will work to the advantage of the gambit instigator (and is thus "foolproof") the Batman Gambit does have a failure condition. Indeed, this failure condition will often be quite obvious and foreseeable to the audience, who have the benefit of perspective and objectivity. The victims of the gambit, however, do not enjoy those luxuries.

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: Batman Gambits involving Batman]]
[[AC:Comics]]
* Since the mid-1990s in Comics, Batman's gambits seem to consistently get hijacked by other people -- with disastrous consequences. The [[JusticeLeagueOfAmerica JLA]] arc "Tower of Babel" ([[http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/batman_manipulative_bastard_3147.jpg the former page image]]) is an example of this. It's somewhat masterfully combined with a second BatmanGambit specifically designed to keep Batman diverted while his stolen contingencies are being used against the rest of the League: [[spoiler: Ra's Al Ghul steals Bruce's parents' bodies from their graves and dangles them above a Lazarus Pit.]]\\
\\
It's worth noting that, while the League ultimately overcomes Batman's contingencies, they do so only by cooperating and remembering what they know about each other, something they probably wouldn't do under the kinds of circumstances Batman prepared the contingencies for. And the weakness in the hijack? All Batman had to do to stop the entirety of it was to pick up the phone and listen to the rest of the League for more than two seconds. [[spoiler: It's no wonder Ra's is grinning so much when he does TheReveal.]]
* An example of this failing spectacularly comes from Batman as well, in the ''Wargames'' arc. Spoiler sets into motion a plan of Batman's which should, theoretically, end up with him in control of all of Gotham's gangs via a proxy. The whole plan hinged on the fact that he was supposed to be present at a meeting between all the heads of the gangs via one of his aliases, Matches Malone. Spoiler went and set off the plan without telling him, and due to his absence, the gang leaders got trigger happy and basically took each other out, leaving a power vacuum that sparked the out of control gang war.
* In the "Hush" storyline, he finds himself facing off against a mind-controlled Superman, and is clearly physically outmatched. His solution is to have Catwoman dangle Lois Lane off a roof, and give Supes the choice of either saving her or continuing the fight. This trick would never work if he didn't know full well that even a brainwashed Clark would never let Lois die, and that Catwoman is just amoral enough to threaten an innocent woman without actually meaning it. He may even have predicted that Lois' struggles would cause her to fall, adding an element of urgency to the situation.\\
\\
Batman even managed to set this up without hinting overtly at Superman's secret identity. He simply tells Catwoman that Supes cares about the people who work at the Daily Planet. There are three people there at the time, giving her three options; Lois, Perry White, or Jimmy Olson, any of whom Clark would gladly lay down his life for. It's Catwoman herself that decided Lois would be the best target, so she had no idea she was dangling Superman's ''wife'' from a ledge.
* {{Darkseid}} had one for when Batman attacked him: he predicted that Batman would succeed in finding his way back to his own time, so he set things up such that when it occurred, Batman would bring with him a weapon capable of killing the entire JLA. Of course, Batman eventually countered with a XanatosGambit of his own, hence the fail condition.

[[AC:FanFic]]
* In ''[[FanFic/ImAMarvelAndImADC Marvel/DC: After Hours]]'', Batman shows once again why this trope is named after him. Despite naturally not knowing about the events of [[spoiler: "One More Day",]] he is able to piece together enough clues to know how to [[spoiler: use Peter's DealWithTheDevil to convince the Joker he's given up and force Mephisto himself to save the day]].

[[AC:Films - Animated]]
* ''BatmanUnderTheRedHood'' indicates that he taught this to his sidekicks as well. Red Hood hatches a plan that's entirely dependent on the assumption that, when pressed hard enough, Black Mask would [[spoiler:free The Joker from Arkham.]]Which is, of course, exactly what happens.

[[AC:Films - Live Action]]
* Ironically, every single thing the Joker does in ''{{The Dark Knight|Saga}}'' is a Batman Gambit. This is perhaps the most obvious when he is [[spoiler:in prison and goads one police officer to try and beat him up, overpowers the officer, and uses him as leverage to get his phone call. Of course the call he makes is to the cell phone that blows up the station.]] If, at any point along the line, the police had acted differently than he'd anticipated, none of this would have worked.\\
\\
It should be noted that this was apparently the Joker's Plan C. The cops were obligated to give him a phone call when they arrested him. When they didn't, he demanded one before revealing where the hostages were. When he ran out of time on that, he manipulated the cop. If that hadn't worked, he presumably would have had a plan D up his sleeve. This example is a bit egregious since the Joker's BatmanGambit relied on an [[http://www.videojug.com/expertanswer/following-the-arrest/am-i-really-restricted-to-one-phone-call-once-i-am-in-jail urban legend]] (the police ''aren't'' necessarily obliged to give you the fabled One Phone Call.)

[[AC:WesternAnimation]]
* ''[[WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries Batman: The Animated Series]]'':
** The episode "The Cape and Cowl Conspiracy" (based on an earlier comic story) had a crime boss hire a specific villain with a penchant for death traps to hunt down and get Batman's cape and cowl. After several attempts, he managed to do so, apparently outwitting the great Batman. Upon returning the items to his employer, the crime boss asked about a recent job the villain did concerning [[MacGuffin miscellaneous important items]]. After he explained the job, the crime boss revealed himself to be Batman, who organized the entire ordeal so that the villain would reveal where the items were as well as have the key to the locker holding them. If Batman had thwarted the death traps and captured him conventionally, they probably wouldn't have gotten any information or the key from him.
** Harley actually manages to outsmart Batman -- more than the Joker ever could -- so he whips out a BatmanGambit and convinces her the Joker wouldn't believe she could pull it off. So of course to prove it she brings the Joker to Batman... right where he wants him, because Joker would never let anyone else kill Bats, making this a BatmanGambit that used Harley to pull a BatmanGambit on the Joker. All while chained upside-down and half-conscious.\\
\\
Of course, this all started because Harley nailed a BatmanGambit on ''Batman.'' She pretended to be betraying Joker by giving his plans to his worst enemy, on the condition that Batman protect her from her boyfriend's wrath. Then she rigged a robotic Joker decoy to attack her and Batman at the rendezvous point. Batman did as he had promised - he tackled Harley to shield her from the bullets. If he had not done so, she would never have been able to get close enough to him that she could stick him in the back with a needle full of sedative. No wonder he was impressed.
* ''JusticeLeague'':
** Batman pulls a particularly brilliant one, outwitting what essentially amounts to the [[LegionOfDoom Injustice League]] and getting them to undermine their own plans and betray one another... all while ''immobilized in a full-body restraint system in the basement''. He proceeds to tell [[spoiler:The Joker]] that he [[Awesome/JusticeLeague could've escaped at any point he wanted, but only stayed around to keep an eye on him.]]
** In "Wild Cards," when he talks to Harley Quinn suggesting that the Joker's likely more interested in the girl he's standing next to on TV while he sends Harley out to do the grunt work. She refuses to turn on the Joker and seemingly knocks out Batman then returns to the Joker to talk things out. Joker promptly slaps her aside, quickly realizing that it was all Batman's plan to get her to return to base and lead him to his headquarters, which is just what happened.
** There's also a ''double'' BatmanGambit -- ''both'' carried out by Bat...men! Justice Lord Batman tries to convince our Batman to join the cause, but Bats ends up reversing it.
** During the same episode, TheFlash is imprisoned with the rest of the good Justice League, and Justice Lord Batman is told to guard them. In the middle of his shift, Flash seems to go into cardiac arrest. Justice Lord Batman panics and rushes to revive him, only to find that the Flash is still very much alive after he knocks him out with one hand. Flash knew that something bad happened to the alternate Flash, and that Batman would not want to watch that happen again. If the bad Batman had not had the same emotional difficulties with losing people he loves that the good Batman has, the plan wouldn't have worked.\\
\\
And then, when Flash releases the good Batman, he reveals yet ''another'' such gambit. He knew that the Justice Lord Batman would watch him more closely than the others, and probably catch on to any escape plan he had. However, the bad Batman ''wouldn't'' expect such a thing coming from Flash, and so Batman's gambit was - just to wait and see what the kid came up with. [[CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming It worked]] [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome for both of them]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
* Light uses this technique in ''Manga/DeathNote'' by having Misa and himself give up control of the Death Note to another individual to throw L off his track and clear his and Misa's names. The plan is uncannily successful, and ultimately [[spoiler:L is killed]] as a result.
** "Just as planned!"
** In the movie, however, things go differently: [[spoiler:L figures out what happened the second he gets his hands on Light's note and sees the rule about losing memories. Seeing Light's plan, L plays along, writing his own name in a Death Note (making him immune to death by any other Note for 23 days), and catches Light in the act.]]
** What's particularly notable about the manga example is that technically the person whose actions Light is anticipating is ''himself''. And it's not even really himself, but rather what he ''would'' have been had he never found the Death Note. In other words, he has to anticipate just what he would have done and how he would have acted had he never found the Death Note, do the same process with Misa, work in how L and the gang would react to that, and ''then'' work in how the ''as of yet to him unknown'' corporate executive is going to act, ''and then figure out how everyone's going to react to that''.
*** At which point it really becomes GambitRoulette.
*** He also knew that if the plan had failed, he would have been safe and lived, although not as Kira, because [[spoiler: Higuchi]] would be caught and blamed for everything. Light would then be off the hook and live his life out normally... though, as the movie shows, [[spoiler:even that wasn't without a failure condition]].
** L staves off many episodes using this technique, in fact his entire operation in the first half could probably be summed up as this. Serial killer eliminating prisoners all over the world through methods unseen, unheard, and untraceable? Set yourself up on television [[spoiler:with a substitute]] so that Kira will attempt to make a move against you. Before he does that, make sure the broadcast is isolated in the single region where similar killings were determined to have started. Thus, since your substitute was killed in that area and was killed in the same way as many others, that person must be in that area, watching TV at some point, and must only be able to kill with a name and a face. Needless to say, Light is [[ParanoiaFuel thoroughly whipped by this]].
*** The next part of L's operation also did this. There was no way to witness Kira physically, but L made extreme observation of his killing patterns and even formed a "personality profile" off of it. When he whittled this down to Light Yagami, he decided to meet Light in college. And how did he introduce himself? Telling Light that he was the detective hunting Kira, and [[MagnificentBastard knowing subconsciously]] that there was no way Light could do anything about it. He then matches Kira's characteristics - childishness, poor sportsmanship - with Light's regular behaviors. As the investigation winds down and lines have been drawn, L even delves into GenreSavvy by warning his investigation team that should he be killed within a certain timespan, they should follow his original assumption that Light IS Kira.
* [[InsaneTrollLogic Izaya]] [[ManipulativeBastard Orihara]] of ''LightNovel/{{Durarara}}'' oozes this trope like a fountain. He has stated that it is solely for his own amusement, but there is no denying that his manipulative capabilities over the residents of Ikebukuro are amazing. Few have been able to work their way around his plans.
** The only person Izaya opts to work his way around is [[SuperStrength Shizu-chan]].
* The character Joseph Joestar in part 2 of the manga ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure'' states that him drawing the character Cars to be on top of the volcano when it erupts in the final battle was all part of an elaborate battle strategy. However, this is quickly thrown out the window seconds later when Joseph's inner thoughts reveal that Cars standing there when the volcano erupted was just a coincidence, and the Joseph simply didn't want it to look like he only won due to a fluke.
** Jotaro is good at this. He showed us how by outwitting Daniel J D'arby in a high stakes with souls on the line. Jotaro not only caught D'arby off guard with various call outs, but raised the stakes higher than D'arby could believe, eventually coming to a head when D'arby subconsciously admitted defeat.
* The Major pulled one against Alucard in ''{{Manga/Hellsing}}''. Recognizing Alucard's and his master's style, he fabricated an emergency by having several traitor vampires slaughter the entire population of a VTOL warship, and sent one of Millennium's core lieutenants there to apparently trap and kill Alucard when he was sent to deal with the situation. Instead, everybody in the ship was to be the trap to lock him in the destroyed warship when he inevitably slaughtered the entire squad, as vampires cannot cross water. While Alucard used his powers to psychically drag the damaged ship to the Thames, the Major's army had already slaughtered London and forced a Catholic-Protestant-vampire war in the burning city, making him too late to stop it.
* The entire plot of the ''GhostInTheShell'' movie is one big BatmanGambit by an opponent aptly called ''the Puppetmaster''. [[spoiler: At one point he hacks into the heavily secured factory that builds the replacement parts for the Majors and Batous cybernetic bodies and had it create a unique cybernetic body. Then he had the body walk out of the factory and to the next highway to step in front of the next passing truck. As access to the factory would also allow him to temper with the replacement parts for Section 9, they really want the remains of the rogue cyborg body in their lab for analyzation. Exactly where the AI wanted to be, but couldn't get to without his handlers stopping him. Everything that happens in the movie is all part of his plan to get an opportunity to talk with the Major.]]
* ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'': Gendo Ikari has an elaborate XanatosGambit in motion... probably. Mostly we get to see his various Batman Gambits using Rei and Shinji, most notably micromanaging Shinji's gradual emotional breakdown, and (perhaps) master minding Rei's GiantMecha kamikaze run. Add his near supernatural power over women and you have an antagonist who is far beyond any of the main cast's league.
** It's definitely a BatmanGambit rather than a XanatosGambit, as he himself is unable to actually accomplish his goal, and the person who is capable of accomplishing it is able to completely ruin his entire efforts if they just refuse to do so. [[spoiler: This is, of course, exactly what happens in EndOfEvangelion. "I am not your doll."]]
* The heroes pull this off when Captain Misamaru of ''Anime/MartianSuccessorNadesico'' successfully predicts the actions of the Jovians and herds their superweapon into a trap, by continually convincing them the trap is elsewhere.
* In ''Manga/YuYuHakusho'', the reason Sensui set it up so that the tunnel to Makai would be opened, and the events that came afterwards, is [[spoiler:so that he could die in Makai at the hands of a powerful demon, since it would be nobler than to die of the terminal illness he had. Said strong demon happened to be Yusuke, possessed by the spirit of his ancestor, Raizen]].
** Later in the manga-only final arc, it was revealed that ''everything'' the heroes faced was an elaborate setup by [[spoiler:King Enma]], who purposely pardoned dangerous criminals with the specific hope that his detectives would capture them and thus make himself look better.
* In ''Manga/ThePrinceOfTennis'', BadassBookworm Sadaharu Inui is having his ass kicked in the courts by another Badass Bookworm, his former partner Renji Yanagi, who is as good as using info as Inui himself is. Then, Inui claims he won't use his data anymore... [[spoiler:and it turns out this was fake, since he lulled Renji into a false sense of security and shaped their game into a copy of their last unfinished match. With this in mind, Inui ultimately wins]].
** In general, several of the tennis games in the series use these Gambits as part of the strategy. Examples are Fuji Shuusuke ([[spoiler:who let his brother's team manager from Saint Rudolph almost beat him, only to come back with a vengeance and CRUSH him as punishment for mistreating Yuuta]]) and Kawamura Takashi ([[spoiler:who used on purpose two variations of the Hadokyuu to weaken Kabaji in the Hyoutei arc and force him into a draw]]) from Seigaku, as well as Masaharu Niou of Rikkaidai [[spoiler:who ''[[MasterOfDisguise switched places with his partner Hiroshi Yagyuu]]'' for half a game to trick both teammates and rivals into believing one was the other, confusing Eiji and Oishi and defeating them]].
* Lelouch, the protagonist of ''Anime/CodeGeass'', does this a lot. Along with Lelouch, Cornelia and Schneizel also have been known to pull less convoluted Batman Gambits of their own. [[InTheBlood It must run in the family]].
** To defeat Mao, a mind-reader, Lelouch distracts him with [[TheTapeKnewYouWouldSayThat a recording that accurately predicts his responses to Lelouch's statements]], allowing the police to close in without him noticing.
*** In the second season, Lelouch pulls this stunt again, against [[spoiler:Schneizel who really should have known better]], and with a much more improbable level of precision.
** When Mao came back, he used his own power of absolute command to give ''himself'' orders to tell Suzaku to charge in guns blazing when he heard Lelouch scream, then [[MemoryGambit wiped his own memory of this]]. Lelouch then plays right into Mao's hands, seemingly completely defeated. When he screams, Suzaku comes in and the gambit is revealed. It's hopelessly convoluted and yet masterful.
** When Lelouch, as Zero the masked terrorist, claims that he wishes to join Nunally's Special Administrative Region of Japan along with his Black Knights, he later makes a secret pact with the Britannians to have him pardoned for his crimes and be exiled safely, which allows the Britannians to attempt to engineer the situation in their favor: they would broadcast that they were pardoning Zero for all crimes at the opening ceremony, and Zero only, therefore meaning that the other members of the Black Knights were still accountable for crimes, and were thus betrayed by Zero. The Britannians had hoped that this would trigger a riot amongst the betrayed Black Knights, which would provide them with ample excuse to put them down with lethal force. Problem is, Lelouch had earlier made the point that Zero is an ideal, not a man. So, when everyone at the assembly suddenly puts on Zero masks, no one can try to force the issue. The only person who knows his identity, Suzaku, can't call him on it. Thus, they are all granted immunity and a safe trip out. It heavily relied on Suzaku being sentimental enough to stop the other government officials from opening fire on the crowd, and it came within a hair's breadth of backfiring.
** Lelouch often has plans that rely on the fact that while "other" people have a sense of {{honor|BeforeReason}}, he does not, and uses it to trip them up. Good examples include the way he tricked Guilford into a duul of honor, and then pulled a sneaky trick on him. There's also him using the UFN leaders as hostages to trick the Black Knights into preventing Schneizel from nuking his ass, forcing him into conventional strategy.
** The infamous episode "The Stolen Mask" has what may be a potential BG, at least as far as the fans are concerned. A cat has stolen the Zero mask, and Lelouch and Suzaku chase it to the top of the clocktower; Lelouch slips on the roof and Suzaku catches him. This allows Lelouch to express gratitude and friendship towards Suzaku without appearing suspicious, which he uses to get Suzaku onto the Student Council, giving him some real friends and slowly moving the school towards accepting him in spite of his being Japanese. It also has the unintended[[hottip:*:Because let's be realistic here, Lelouch is a MagnificentBastard but even ''he'' can't read a cat's mind]] benefit of keeping Suzaku from seeing the mask, as the cat gets it off when Suzaku isn't looking and Lelouch retrieves it while he's busy dealing with the cat.
* An example where it isn't set up by a villain: ''everything'' in ''Manga/CardCaptorSakura'' (except for the YaoiGuys) is an elaborate plan by Clow Reed to ensure that his magical creations would have the best master (Sakura) after his death. The reason Sakura captures the cards and then masters them is because if she didn't, they'll cause a lot of trouble in her town. However, Eriol (Clow's {{reincarnation}}, who kept all of his previous life's memories) made sure she wasn't in any real danger (or anyone else in town, for that matter). This is possible because Clow was prophetic to the point of omniscience, able to see the future so perfectly that he WAS able to see every consequence of his actions and what to cause to happen. Except for the YaoiGuys, Eriol admits that one surprised him (he had intended Yue/Yukito to have a BodyguardCrush on Sakura, but Yukito fell for Sakura's ''older brother'' instead). As an interesting side point, the whole point of this in the manga was to [[BroughtDownToNormal rid himself of that power]], which would require Sakura to be a stronger mage than him.
** Of course, there was also the goal of making sure the Clow Cards power supply didn't fail, leading to their deaths, too. They couldn't run on Clow's residual energy forever, but the real danger was when they were left in limbo and Sakura had to master them.
* Griffith from ''{{Manga/Berserk}}'' does this against the Queen of Midland and a conspiracy of nobles who wanted him dead. The conspirators apparently poison Griffith, but unbeknownst to them, Foss, the key figure in the conspiracy to kill Griffith, is blackmailed by Griffith into putting a drug meant to give the [[FauxDeath appearance of death]] in his cup instead of poison. The Queen and her nobles, believing themselves to be victorious, all gather together in celebration at her castle, and that's when Griffith springs his trap, having them all locked inside the castle and then having the place set ablaze, killing them all.
* In ''{{LightNovel/Kurenai}}'', the protagonist Benika pulls off such a gambit with her "kidnapping" of Murasaki Kuhouin. Although she assigned Shinkurou as a bodyguard to protect Murasaki from being recaptured by her own [[BigScrewedUpFamily (very messed up)]] family, she never expected to keep her safe from them forever. Instead, her plan was to "poison the prize": by letting Murasaki experience enough of the outside world while living with Shinkurou, she would hopefully return to the Kuhouin family with the knowledge and willpower to bring down the family's traditions from the inside.
* ''{{Manga/Gunnm}}'': Caerula Sanguis applies a Batman Gambit in a rather unorthodox way: one-on-one battle. In Volume 6 of the ''Last Order'' storyline, after a token unarmed exchange with [[ActionGirl Alita]] and a cloud of throwing knives, she announces a special technique called the Eight-Block Death Gate Array. In the beginning, it looks merely like a fast combination of sword strikes. However, this is only the beginning of the ruse. The Array is actually not a technique or even a combination, but a tactic custom-tailored to every single enemy she meets. By using her [[ReallySevenHundredYearsOld 700 years of combat experience]] and her ability to sense neural pulse flow and thus infer the intentions and thoughts of her opponents, she takes the terrain as well as the opponent's capabilities, reflexes, and even their personalities all into account, shaping the match such that all her opponent's actions, both conscious and unconscious, lead them inexorably to a location where they will be completely helpless against her full attack. She is apparently good enough that she can suss this out completely within the first few seconds of any given fight. The only ways to defeat the Array in a duel are to be completely certain you are doing one thing while doing something completely different (such as freezing when every cell in your body is yelling for you to run), or by completely banishing one's ingrained reflexes, becoming completely aware of the self and the world, and thus able to make true choices.
* Jinnai, the SmugSnake of ''Anime/ElHazardTheMagnificentWorld'', makes a bid for {{Magnificent Bastard}}y with this one: There's a ForgottenSuperweapon that could help his Bugrom allies win their war, but only the good-aligned Priestesses of Mt. Muldoon know where it's [[SealedEvilInACan hidden away]]. So he orders the Bugrom fleet to set sail. The heroes, thinking Jinnai knows where it is, panic and sail off with the priestesses leading the way... and Jinnai simply follows them to the right island.
* Aeolia Schenberg's feats in ''{{Gundam 00}}'' are oft barely noticed. In spite of living 200 years before the events of the anime, he managed to lay down a framework for Celestial Being and created an A.I. that would be able to create missions and postulate possible strategies for the group to carry out. Not only that, he theorized and developed technologies that were to come to be centuries beyond his time, including the Twin Drive for the Gundam 00 (and the solar furnaces themselves for that matter) and the orbital elevators. Although he planned to go into cryogenic sleep and wake up in the future, he also ''planned for his death''. He made sure that if he was ever killed, the Trans-Am system would be activated in all Gundams, as well as making other information stored outside of Veda accessible (like the aforementioned Twin Drive). Aeolia's [[BatmanGambit surprise 200-year old plans]] often manage to foil Ribbons's, the resident MagnificentBastard, [[XanatosGambit own machinations]], to which he frequently expresses frustration at. After all, he thought [[WellIntentionedExtremist he was just carrying out Aeolia's wishes too]].
** Federation soldier Hank Hercules initiates a coup de'tat and seizes control of the Africa Tower elevator's low orbital station, counting on a lethal response from the A-LAWS that will illuminate the citizens into their brutal ways. However, the A-LAWS use the incident to facilitate their own Gambit, using their information control to frame the mutineers for the A-LAWS' ruthless attack on the citizens and the destruction of the tower itself, all to completely discredit the mutineers and their anti-government allies, while giving the A-LAWS a pretext to consolidate the full might of the Federation army under their banner.
*** Though this turns out to have fatal consequences later on, as some of the more important members of A-LAWS make a HeelFaceTurn in response.
* Xellos does this all the time in ''{{Anime/Slayers}}'', which is not particularly difficult, as everyone in that series is extremely predictable. Usually, whatever he does serves his plans in some way, but a lot of the time he just manipulates them because he thinks it's funny. It generally is.
* Shikamaru Nara from ''{{Manga/Naruto}}'' won most of his early major battles by using Batman Gambits to manipulate his opponents into just the right spot such that he can either [[ShadowPin catch their shadows]] or force them to harm themselves through use of this otherwise harmless technique.
** Deidara also pulls one to capture Gaara: he realizes the sand Gaara is attacking with is the one he has the most control over, so when Gaara rips Deidara's arm off he has the living clay inside said arm crawl inside this sand. He then sends a huge bomb towards the Sand Village so Gaara has to send most of his sand to withhold the blast, forcing Gaara to block his next attack with his best sand, has the clay he left inside that sand crawling into the center of Gaara's sand sheld, then detonates them.
* ''FullmetalAlchemist'' manga and Brotherhood -- [[spoiler:Father's entire plan coming to fruition rests on the fact that he and the homunculi knew that the sacrifices would never back down and leave the country.]]
** Dr. Marcoh also pulls one in the manga and Brotherhood when [[spoiler:he springs a trap on Envy by having ReverseMole Zanpano call him and give him Marcoh's location. Marcoh knew Envy was so cruel and ruthless that he would personally come down to screw with him even more.]]
* In ''Manga/DragonBall Z'', Vegito pulls this off on Majin Buu. It seems that Vegito can beat Buu at any time, but is just toying with him, while the Kais are asking why he just doesn't GetItOverWith. Turns out Vegito is purposely making Buu angry enough to get desperate, which is when Buu starts absorbing people. Vegito allows himself to get absorbed on purpose so he can rescue Gohan, Trunks, Goten, and Piccolo, who were absorbed earlier.
** He clearly gets this from Vegeta, who also pulls a couple Batman Gambits throughout the series. In the Namek saga he steals all of Freeza's dragon balls while both Freeza and Zarbon are in the same ship as he is, by fooling them into thinking he'd already left the ship.
* Akiyama Shinichi of ''Manga/LiarGame'' uses this trope pretty much continuously. I mean, just look at the way he plays on Fujisawa's anxiety in the first round through constant surveillance, panicking Fujisawa enough for him to believe that [[spoiler:Akiyama was the LGT representative arriving to collect the 100 million yen. Yes, Fujiyama ''handed his money to his opponent'' after guarding it so intensely for 30 days.]]
** A bigger example of this can be found during the musical chairs arc, in which [[spoiler:Akiyama predicts and manipulates the extras, a traitorous teammate, as well as the enemy teams into making a 'trash medal' player win in the end. Had anyone gotten suspicious at any point, had the enemy team decided to sacrifice the trash medal player early, or had the team in particular he'd gathered the medals for lost out to the other, it would have all fallen apart, making it a wonderful example of this trope.]]
* Both Marik and Dark Bakura in ''{{Anime/Yu-Gi-Oh}}'' tend to operate this way. One notable example is Dark Bakura's duel with Yami during the Battle City finals. When Yami secures certain victory by playing his god card, Marik's gambit to to release Bakura from Dark Bakura's control, and thus force Yami to lose the duel in order to protect his critically ill friend's life, has two flaws in it. The first is that Marik didn't expect Dark Bakura to protect Bakura by re-possessing him. The second -- and one which everyone seems to overlook -- is that Yami could simply ask Bakura to forfeit the duel.
** For that matter, most of the card game duels played in this series operate on Batman Gambits. Duelists continually bluff and trick their opponents into helping them set up an elaborate ploy that will secure them certain victory, ''unless'' their opponent then spots the tiny but fatal flaw, or just draws the right card out of dumb luck.
** One of the reasons that Yami Yugi is never really beaten is because he always seems to remain two steps ahead of his opponents...even when they are two steps ahead of him. For the matter, one can probably rename it "Yami Yugi Syndrome".
* Eda in ''Anime/BlackLagoon'' has a very crude (but effective and hilarious) one set up that she uses to bushwhack "Greenback" Jane. Even the other characters think the plan is stupid.
** [[CreepyTwins Hansel and Gretel]] managed to divert the majority of the [[BountyHunter hired]] [[CarnivalOfKillers guns]] out for their bounty with one of these. Step #1: get a car with tinted windows so no one can see who's inside. Step #2: Bribe two local orphans to pose as you by putting on your clothes and wigs similar to your hair, then get them in the car and have them drive off. Step #3: Laugh as the stupid bounty hunters blow the car to smithereens and realize how they've been had by two little kids.
** Rock attempts one that would bring Ronapour to the world's attention in the "Roberta's Blood Trail" Arc by manipulating or predicting the actions of just about everyone in the city. [[spoiler: And he would would have gotten away with it too, if he'd known about the undercover CIA agent that he practically told his entire plan to.]]
* Though he frequently makes use of the IndyPloy to succeed, the titular character of ''Manga/RanmaOneHalf'' is not adverse to a good BatmanGambit, particularly in the manga. Though they do usually fail and force him to revert to IndyPloy, that's because Ranma Saotome's "friends" and enemies are extremely unpredictable, and so prone to reacting in ways other then what he expected. The best example would be the first [[EmbarrassingFirstName Pantyhose Taro]] story, where he sets up an elaborate plan intended to convince DirtyOldMan and JerkAss [[OldMaster Happosai]] to rename Taro by giving him a faked dream sequence in which Happosai sees a future in which Taro has, due to his name, become a terrible PantyThief, and is then sent back to the day he named Taro. Ranma expects Happosai to choose to give Taro a new name. Instead, Happosai proves his ChaoticEvil credentials by promptly trying to murder what he thinks is baby Taro with his bomb attacks.
* In ''Anime/MagicalGirlLyricalNanohaStrikerS'', the heroes pull one of these to prevent the villains from getting a MacGuffin ([[spoiler:by taking it out of its suitcase and hiding it under Caro's hat]]).
* In ''{{Manga/Trigun}}'', Vash wins most of his battles by quickly and carefully studying his opponent's personality and mannerisms to predict how the opponent will act and move.
* In ''Manga/KatekyoHitmanReborn'', [[spoiler:Tsuna, or at least his future self from ten year's time, pulls this off to the exteme in order to save multiple universes from the arc's {{BigBad}} Byakuran. But mainly for training himself and his family up.]]
* In the anime only ''Zanpakuto Rebellion'' arc of ''{{Manga/Bleach}}'', [[spoiler:Muramasa only lets slip his location and separating Ichigo from the rest of the shinigami and luring him into attacking him using Getsuga Tenshou for the purpose of deflecting it onto the barrier containing Captain-Commander Yamamoto to break it. Muramasa's whole gambit hinges on Ichigo using the full powered Getsuga Tenshou without figuring out that the barrier wasn't keeping Yamamoto ''in'', but keeping Muramasa ''out''. Any other Shinigami might have figured this out sooner.]]
** In the manga Aizen pulls a pretty simple one in the Hueco Mundo arc. He kidnaps Orihime, under the pretense that he wants her power, which causes Soul Society to temporarily abandon her because they think she defected. However, when Ichigo's team go to rescue her alone and inevitably get their asses kicked, Soul Society sends four captains and lieutenants to bail them out, at which point Aizen shuts the door behind them, leaving them locked in Hueco Mundo and unable to help while he goes to fight the remaining shinigami, who have lost a significant amount of their strength.
* In ''Manga/SchoolMermaid'', the one pulling the strings is [[spoiler: Haruko, who deliberately brought the unconfident, nonathletic Yoshiko to hunt mermaids while ensuring she wouldn't find out the consequences of failure until [[RaceAgainstTheClock it was too late]]: being transformed into a mermaid herself. Turns out she needed a mermaid whose name started with the same letter in order to make her crush fall under its spell... Guess who qualifies.]]
* In ''Manga/PokemonSpecial'', Fantina has a pretty good one set up as her Gym gimmick. First, the challenger has to solve some difficult but straight forward math questions to reach her, forcing the challenger to adapt a logical way of thinking. When the challenger actually reaches her, her Pokemon's illusions kick in, totally destroying all that built up logic and with it the trainer's brain. If a less logical person were to reach her (presumably just by defeating all the Gym Trainers instead of answering the questions), he would just be caught up in the illusion and not realize he's getting the crap beaten out of him.
* In ''Manga/OnePiece'', [[spoiler: Blackbeard successfully defeats and captures Ace and hands him over to the Marines, earning him the title of Warlord of the Sea]]. Knowing [[spoiler:Whitebeard's familial protectiveness,]] [[DisasterDominoes a chain of events]] would led up to [[spoiler: a war between the Whitebeard Pirates and the Marines at Marineford, which gave him a clear opening to break into Impel Down and recruit the most dangerous and powerful prisoners into his crew]].
* In ''Anime/RevolutionaryGirlUtena'', most of [[SmugSnake Touga]] [[spoiler: (and by [[TheManBehindTheMan extension]], [[BigBad Akio]])]] and [[ManipulativeBastard Mikage's]] plans to obtain the Rose Bride rely on these. In particular, there's Episode 11 (counting on the fact that Utena would prioritize her feelings for Dios over her desire to emulate him, costing her the duel), ''all'' of the Black Rose Duelist arc (Mikage sets up emotional catastrophes in the lives of students so they'll enter his seminar), and Episode 38 (which relied on [[spoiler: Utena prioritizing Anthy over Akio...not only setting her up for a stab in the back, but cementing her as a prince who can be used to open the Rose Gate.)]]
* Episode 9 of ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'' has a spectacular one pulled by [[CuteIsEvil Kyuubey]] on [[AntiHero Kyoko]] and [[DarkMagicalGirl Homura]]. Anticipating that Kyoko's re-emerging heroic tendencies will lead her to try and [[spoiler: change Sayaka back from witch form]], he vaguely implies that Madoka could use ThePowerOfFriendship to do so (and of course, Kyoko would need to accompany her for protection). [[spoiler: Of course, it was an impossible prospect from the start, and not only does Kyoko pull a HeroicSacrifice to defeat the witch and save Madoka, but it leaves Homura with no other Puella Magi to help her battle the upcoming Walpurgisnacht - which practically forces the incredibly self-sacrificing Madoka to [[DealWithTheDevil make a contract]], guaranteeing her transformation into a witch that will destroy the world and provide Kyuubey with endless amounts of energy.]]
** It [[spoiler:backfires spectacularly in the final episode, when Madoka ''pulls a gambit of her own'' against him. While Madoka does indeed make a contract with Kyuubei, the terms of said contract are that ''witches never exist in the first place''. The end result? Madoka [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence becomes a Magical Girl goddess]] and changes the universe so that Kyuubei has to rely on a much less efficient form of energy, along with altering the little bastard's memory so that he doesn't even know what a "witch" is. Oh, and she binds him to the new system so he won't be evil anymore.]]
* Keima Katsuragi of ''Manga/TheWorldGodOnlyKnows'' enacts these regularly, thanks in no small part to his ([[DangerouslyGenreSavvy Dangerous]]) GenreSavvy, using his knowledge to capture runaway spirits, goddesses and subversive demons. [[spoiler:Most recently, he had Fiore out herself as Vintage's agent and recaptured her several chapters later after she gets away from Haqua and Nora.]]
* Kotetsu pulls off a good one in episode 13 of ''Anime/TigerAndBunny'' to get around [[spoiler:Jake's mind reading powers.]] Since he's a bit of an IdiotHero, it even fools the ''audience'' at first.
* Hajime in ''Manga/TheKindaichiCaseFiles'' does this a lot in order to corner a suspect or find out details that would normally be overlooked including but not limited to: rigging watches, lying about lost items and faking deaths.
* In ''{{Manga/Eyeshield 21}}'', Hiruma, for most of the time, always had some plans that enables him to pull a comeback move from dire straits for his team. Some of his plans often seem ridiculous or just plain batshit insane, but it works most of the time.
* A meta-example in ''Manga/MahouSenseiNegima'' would be author KenAkamatsu's plot to essentially write an [[RuleOfCool over the top]] {{Shounen}} action series when his publishers ''wanted'' a HaremSeries by [[HiddenDepths hiding the action-y]] elements.
* ''Manga/OuranHighSchoolHostClub'' has its DarkestHour as a result of this: Tamaki's EvilMatriarch grandmother is currently using such gambits to separate him and Haruhi, thus revealing herself to be the series' true villain.
** [[spoiler:Not anymore, as Tamaki's dad pulls off a SugarWiki/CrowningMomentOfAwesome relieving her of the post]].
* ''Anime/{{Windaria}}'': Lagado turns Alan into his UnwittingPawn by exploiting his desire to protect [[{{Arcadia}} The Valley]]. If Alan said 'We're moving' instead, the plan would have collapsed then and there.
* ''Anime/{{Inukami}}'': One episode featured the inukami plotting to take advantage of Keita's perverted tendencies, sure their plan would work immediately. Except he showed restraint, foiling their plan.
* ''{{Manga/Yawara}}'': Jigorou has proven to be quite good at these especially when it comes to manipulating his granddaughter Yawara.
* ''[[TenchiMuyo Katsuhito Masaki]] is the main reason that Tenchi netted so many beautiful alien women. Just that it worked a little 'too'' well - he got Tenchi to be curious enough about the mysterious cave that he would be able to go in and investigate, freeing Ryoko, which would catch Ayeka's attention (which he figured would happen) and bring her to Earth so that he could send Tenchi back in his place. Nothing in his plans, however, would prepare him for the other four girls who would show up.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comics]]
* The [[Literature/HarryPotter Voldemort]]-like villain from the horror comic ''[[LockeAndKey Locke & Key]]''. So far, he's been manipulating pretty much '''everyone''' into his agenda.
* In ''{{Wolverine}}: Origins'', Wolverine has a plan with Bucky. The first part of the plan requires Bucky to hire a mercenary to attack Wolverine. Bucky hires everyone's favorite fourth-wall destroying, partially insane, [[{{Deadpool}} merc with a mouth]], because Bucky knows how he hates that everyone thinks he's a Wolverine knock-off -- so Deadpool will draw Wolverine into a very noticeable battle. Deadpool is also the only guy who could have a chance against Wolverine. Hence, the battle ensues, and eventually [[spoiler:Deadpool has Wolverine hanging above a secret pool so that he can drown him, which may take a long time. But then, Wolverine's son, Daken, shows up, Bucky shoots Daken with a special bullet that will dull his healing factor, keeping him knocked out for a long time, so Wolverine can un-brainwash him.]] It turns out, that was the entire point of everything. [[TheChewToy Deadpool did not get paid.]]
* If you know ''anything'' about [[DoctorDoom Victor Von Doom]], you can easily see why this trope could just as well be called ''The Doom Gambit''.
* This is the kind of planning that allows LexLuthor, with no superpowers, to mop the floor with Superman nearly every time the two of them meet. (Until Supes eventually wins, of course.)
** A Pre-Crisis Superman story had Luthor falling in love, turning good, curing a deadly disease, marrying, and even allowing Superman to read his mind (with a machine) to convince his former foe that he'd changed- but it was all a trick; he erased his own memories of the plan and arranged it so that he ''genuinely'' believed he had reformed in order to lure Superman into an inescapable trap. His only error was that he had to make himself forget that ''he was already married'' (to an alien woman) for the plan to work... and Superman was aware of that.
* Spider Jerusalem pulls one in the climax of {{Transmetropolitan}}. The first time he meets [[PresidentEvil Gary Callahan]] he was able to record him with the use of "Source Gas". In their future meetings Callahan is smart enough to nullify such tricks, preventing Spider from getting any dirt on him. But as the story goes on Spider becomes less like a crusading journalist and more like an outright revolutionary, carrying real guns and using lethal force on assailants. After successfully ruining the president's career, he drives the final nail when Callahan meets him one last time to kill him. He has Spider repeatedly scanned for weapons and prepares to have him shot, claiming he nonetheless got a gun past security and it was self defense. Unfortunately for the President, he was relying too much on his belief that Spider had lost it and forgot the first trick he ever played on him. Spider is soaked in Source Gas, and Callahan is exposed.
* In [[MarvelUniverse Marvel's]] ''InfinityGauntlet'' [[CrisisCrossover crossover]], the [[TheChessmaster coldly calculating]] AdamWarlock sets into motion several futile engagements against the omnipotent {{Thanos}} and his upstart successor Nebula, designed to exploit the villains' AchillesHeel and ineptitude (respectively), and ultimately transition the Infinity Gauntlet to Warlock himself.
** It's part of the same gambit, but it's worth pointing out that a substantial part of Warlock's gambit was to script an entire battle involving more than a dozen of the galaxy's strongest warriors sacrificing their lives, to get Thanos to ''raise his hand'' at the right moment.
** Warlock's [[EnemyWithout evil half]] the Magus is not to be outdone in the sequel [[CrisisCrossover crossover]] ''The Infinity War'', implementing an elaborate scheme geared towards the acquisition of the Infinity Gauntlet. Unfortunately, two [[TheChessmaster Chessmasters]] (three, if you count Thanos' duplicitous doppelganger) are better than one, and after Warlock and Thanos discern the Magus' end game, they execute a counter-scheme that sabotages the villain's newfound godhood, and ultimately leads to his defeat.
* In [[MarvelUniverse Marvel's]] ''Comicbook/{{Excalibur}}'', it is revealed that Merlyn arranged the formation of Excalibur and manipulated many subsequent events (including faking his own death), in order to ultimately prevent the collapse of Merlyn's Energy Matrix and destroy Merlyn's former teacher Necrom.
-->''Was all this deception really necessary? - Merlyn's daughter Roma''
* In ''EarthX'', CaptainAmerica uses Alicia Master's Marvels (animated clay fashioned in the guise of Earth's heroes) to have an army immune to the Skull's mind-control, and to preoccupy the supervillain's superhuman slave army. Cap then disguises himself as a Marvel made in his image to fool the Skull into believing he's also immune to the boy's powers, allowing Cap to get in close and [[ShootTheDog snap the Skull's neck]]
* NickFury in the ''UltimateMarvel'' universe performs one of these. In order to eliminate a dangerous assassin and recover the high tech rifle he possesses, Fury anonymously contacts the assassin ''and orders a hit on himself''. He manages to successfully lure the assassin into the open and kill him.
** The best part. The assassin is armed with a gun with X Ray Vision and a [[BulletsDoNotWorkThatWay Magic Bullet that will phase through any barriers between him and his target.]] As he's setting up his aim, the last thing he sees is Nick Fury aiming the only other copy of this same rifle ''at him''. He didn't just call a hit on himself, he slipped the assassin just enough information about his own schedule so that he'd know exactly when and where the assassin would attack.
* A character in the '''{{Blacksad}}'' album "Artic Nation" is in the middle of one several decades in the making. A key factor in this plot is [[spoiler:marrying her own father, while keeping him from discovering this particular bit of information. She succeeds at most of her goals, but her sister is killed in the process and her niece rendered an orphan]].
* Done at least twice in ''SinCity'':
** In "A Dame to Kill For", Ava leaves Dwight [=McCarthy=] for millionaire Damien Lord; then, four years later, comes to Dwight pretending to be afraid of Damien and his servant Manute, playing on Dwight's [[TheDulcineaEffect Lancelot complex]] to get Dwight to investigate and ultimately kill Damien, leaving her Damien's money.
** In "That Yellow Bastard", Senator Roark keeps Detective Hartigan from receiving a few letters from the only friend he has left, "Cordelia" (Nancy Callahan, though Roark doesn't know it), then sends Hartigan a severed finger. Predictably, Hartigan, thinking Nancy's in danger, does what he has to in order to make parole so he can rescue Nancy, then goes looking for her, only to find she was safe and unharmed until that moment, when he accidentally revealed to Roark's son, who had been following him since he left prison, that "Cordelia" was Nancy.
* During the Onslaught CrisisCrossover of the ''{{Comicbook/X-Men}}'' series, it was revealed that Professor X (like Batman) kept secret files on how to kill each X-Man in case they went rogue, including himself (which was good, since Onslaught was created from a combination of Xavier's and Magneto's minds).
** Onslaught actually predates "Tower of Babel", the JLA story where Batman's files are revealed, by a few years (and even JLA: Year One, where [[MartianManhunter J'onn]] did much the same thing, by a period of time).
** The "Xavier Protocols", as these plans are known, eventually end up becoming important plot elements in various other arcs.
* In the 13-issue story "The Kindly Ones" from ''Comicbook/TheSandman'' series, Death calls Dream out on having orchestrated a Batman Gambit.
** What makes it even more amazing is that it's quite possible that he did it unconsciously.
*** As he is the embodiment of Story, it is only natural that [[DangerouslyGenreSavvy tropes would bend to his unconscious will]].
**** It's also worth noting that this gambit is a [[spoiler: suicide.]] It's also implied that only two others in existence realize what's happened: Puck [[spoiler: who says that he could discuss the subject "endlessly"]], and [[spoiler: Loki, who doesn't realize he's been played until it's too late for him.]]
* Interestingly enough, TheJoker, in his more serious interpretations, is immune to the Batman Gambit based simply on the fact that he is completely unpredictable.
** And moreover, that if he can be bothered, he's DangerouslyGenreSavvy enough to see through them.
* ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'' [[http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1986/01/13 shows it in the proto-form]]. It seems Susie has the good makings.
* In ''The Black Knight [=GLORPS=] Again!'' by DonRosa, Arpin Lusene is out to regain his melts-anything-it-touches suit of armor from Scrooge [=McDuck=]. At the armor's supposed resting place, he finds that the armor has been replaced with a note stating that it is not there... which Arpin anticipated, and therefore brought a tiny saw along. With it, he saws silhouettes of a knight's armor in the walls, so Scrooge later believes that Arpin has regained his armor and walked through the walls. Worried, Scrooge goes to check out the armor at its true resting place, Arpin tailing him and stealing it.
* {{ComicBook/Superman}} once pulled one of these on {{Darkseid}}, ''and himself''. After rescuing {{Supergirl}} from being a Female Fury, Supes inducts her as an official hero and sort of parades her around Earth. Angered about losing his prize, Darkseid comes to Earth and seemingly vaporizes her with his Omega Beams. Superman goes apeshit over losing her and beats Darkseid to a pulp and seals him inside the Source Wall. Superman then meets with Supergirl, who used a device to teleport away at the last second, and reports that the plan was successful. They were able to goad Darkseid into coming to fight them personally, and the mere ''sight'' of Supergirl's seeming death was able to trigger Superman's UnstoppableRage so he could curb stomp Darkseid's ass. [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome Batman muses that the plan had no input from him, it was all Clark, and it was brilliant]].
* Marvel's Odin of ''TheMightyThor'' fame has one of his own, when it's revealed during the "Disassembled/Ragnarok" story arc that all of the trials and tribulations that Odin had put Thor through over the years (centuries, millennia) were preparing him to finally be the god to put an end to the Ragnarok Cycle once and for all.
* Udon Comics has a fun one, in the ''Comicbook/StreetFighter Legends''. Karin challenges Sakura to a contest, ANY contest... and Sakura comes up with a Hot-Dog Eating Contest. Karin quickly comes up with the plan. She asks to, at least, be able to pick the time and place of the next contest. She cheats like mad, relying on Sakura to go all out. Sakura does so, and it looks like Karin might win, until it's revealed she was cheating. She goes to her back-up plan. Admit defeat in the stupid, stupid contest, and challenge Sakura IMMEDIATELY to a martial arts match, which Karin wanted. Handicapped. Right there, right now. Sakura, meanwhile, was busy trying not to throw up. It would be a good Xanatos Gambit, if it wasn't for the simple failure condition of Sakura calling foul. Sakura could have NOT exhausted herself in the hot-dog contest, or simply refused the fight. But Sakura is not the person to do that.
* Believe it or not, {{Deadpool}}. You see, everyone thinks that Deadpool's a moron. He's not. This was proved without a doubt when he executed a plan involving the manipulation of the X-Men, HAMMER, NormanOsborn, some random called Kincaid, the SFPD, the public, the local news, and a chicken, over the course of five issues. Deadpool first declared to the X-Men that he was going to kill Kincaid, causing a public fiasco, making the X-Men look like criminals, then, he proceeded to interrupt a ''live broadcast'', wearing a ''home made X-Men outfit'', then, he let himself be captured by Domino, knowing that her morals would mean that when Cyclops ordered Wolverine to "take Deadpool out of the picture", she would protect him, then, Deadpool got Domino to tell him her greatest fear, ''then'' stuck the chicken, (which was Domino's worst fear) into an air vent in a train station, knowing ''full well that Osborn would put Kincaid in an open spot to GET him killed to make the X-Men look bad'', fully expecting the X-Men to try to save Kincaid by way of a vent, pulling out the lights ''FIRST'' to add to the confusion. Then he flushed Kincaid into the open. While Kincaid was in the open, Deadpool kept an eye out for snipers, '''PROTECTING''' Kincaid, while making it look like he was going to kill him. Then, when Wolverine saved Kincaid, Deadpool made a run for it, and fought the X-men (except for Wolverine who would, by now, be in on the plot, Deadpool made sure of that) on the roof, allowing a camera guy taken by Wolverine to film them, making the X-Men look like heroes, and Osborn to look like an incompetent buffoon, just as '''''planned!'''''
** Deadpool's got moves.
** This aspect of Deadpool's personality was lampshaded by Nick Fury in ''VideoGame/MarvelUltimateAlliance 2'' where Nick Fury states that with his intelligence and skill, Deadpool would easily be the most dangerous being on the ''entire planet'' if it weren't for his insanity preventing him from doing ''too'' much.
* Pretty much all of {{Spider-Man}}'s victories against supervillains depend on Batman Gambits, especially ones much more powerful than he is. Spider-Man will either set up in advance or improvise on the spot various traps and goad his enemies into falling into them, and even if he can beat a supervillain in straight combat, he'll joke around and mock them into fury and carelessness to make the fight easier.
* [[RobertCrumb Mr. Natural]] uses this on just about everyone, which makes them even madder when they realize how easily he's able to manipulate them.
* TheMole on the team in ''{{Comicbook/Runaways}}'' attributes this to the success of their plan near the end of the first volume - specifically, they let Nico suggest part of it after arranging things so there wouldn't be many other options.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Fan Works]]
* Bluepencil's ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'' fic ''Fanfic/{{Shinji and Warhammer 40k}}'' is full of both [[BatmanGambit gambits]] and [[GambitRoulette roulettes]]. Made even better by the fact that neither Gendo ''or'' [[TheOmniscientCouncilOfVagueness SEELE]] are willing to admit the possibility that ''neither'' is manipulating Shinji. Let alone the fact that he's manipulating ''both them, and the Japanese government'' against each other.
* In another NGE fic, ''FanFic/NeonExodusEvangelion'', [[spoiler:Lucifer (also known as Unit 01)]] absorbs DJ after the final battle in the series, then stays passive afterward so he can be piloted by one of Natlateth's cloned pilots. Asuka almost screws this up by [[spoiler:breaking into the SEELE-controlled Geofront and starting Lucifer up to try and talk to DJ]], but [[spoiler:manages to avoid it by taking over his body directly and piloting him like a production-model Eva]]. The culmination of the plan is [[spoiler:DJ taking over in the middle of the final combat, so Natlateth stabs Lucifer with the Lance of Longinus. Since DJ is Longinus, and Lucifer became Unit 01 after sustaining wounds by the same Lance while trying to redeem himself, the outcome is that the Redemption is finished]]. If [[spoiler:Natlateth hadn't thought Lucifer was truly dead and had left him at the Geofront]], the plan would have failed.
* The ''BattleRoyale'' fanfiction ''FanFic/SeventyTwoHours'' has [[AxCrazy Damien]] systematically annihilate the cheerleaders (the Brat Pack) by exploiting their mutual distrust for one another. By breaking into their compound and escaping unseen, he's easily able to cause the simmering tension in the group to boil over. Within a couple of hours, every one of them is dead, and they've even [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness disposed of his redundant lackey for him in the process]].
* ''Fanfic/{{Forward}}'' has a couple of these, the first being one hatched by River and Jayne [[spoiler: while being held captive by Niska]], which allows them to [[spoiler: break free by convincing Niska to kill one of his goons and Jayne palming a weapon from his body.]] Later on, River uses one to convince the rest of the crew that she's dangerously unstable, so they leave her behind while going on a job, during which she is able to sneak away and do a job on the side.
* In ''Fanfic/KyonBigDamnHero'', when Kyon, Koizumi, Yuki and Mikuru go to see the Student Council President:
-->'''Kyon:''' Haruhi's going to burst into the middle of the meeting and be really pissed off about not being involved.
-->'''Koizumi:''' Ah... You're certain?
-->'''Kyon:''' She absolutely will if you send a text to her just before we enter the Student Council room. That should give Kimidori-san enough time to state her goals and reasons, but not to actually do anything before Haruhi shows up.
* The VillainProtagonist Tyrin Lieph (in the ''VideoGame/MassEffect'' fanfic The Council Era) successfully [[spoiler: predicts exactly how the Council will respond to his son's death, how the dezba will respond to a dezban high chieftain's execution, and how the public will respond to the dezba's reaction]] in order to massacre the dezba, who he perceives to be a threat to galactic security.
* In ''SurvivorFanCharacters'', Vinnie from Season 2 and 6 is exceptionally well-known for pulling these off, often getting his enemies voted off easily without fail. From Season 5, Gatemaster is also adept at these, although his relies on luck a lot more, and he uses one to get the final four he wants.
** Subverted in the case of Phil from Season 7: he tries to pull one off a la Richard Hatch from [[{{Survivor}} Survivor: Borneo]], when he quits the final immunity challenge on the assumption that whoever won would take him to the finals with them, [[spoiler: and it fails spectacularly when Ker votes him off and takes Wrecker instead.]]
* In ''Fanfic/WithStringsAttached'', the four manage to prevail thanks to a series of Batman Gambits that take advantage of the desperation and boredom of the skahs and the paranoia of the Raleka, as well as [[spoiler: Brox's]] overconfidence.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Films -- Animation]]
* {{Disney/Aladdin}} pulls off a successful gambit against Genie, showing that he was clever enough to not get overwhelmed by the Genie's antics. By challenging Genie's "phenomenal cosmic power," Aladdin was able to escape the Cave of Wonders without using up one of his precious few wishes.
** Aladdin pulls this off again in the finale, where he [[spoiler:tricks the power-mad Jafar into using his final wish to become "an all-powerful genie." Jafar not only gets his "phenomenal cosmic power," but also the "itty-bitty living space" that goes with it: he is imprisoned in his very own lamp.]]
* At the end of ''Film/ABugsLife'', Flik pulls one off on Hopper by claiming that the real bird they just saw was "another one of [his] little bird tricks". [[spoiler:Hopper falls for it and promptly gets his ass handed to him on a silver platter in one of the most {{karmic|Death}} {{Disney Villain Death}}s EVER as Flik and Atta watch from a safe distance.]]
* In ''Disney/TheLionKing'', Scar pulls a fairly sadistic one on Mufasa when he puts Simba in danger. It ends up getting Mufasa killed.
* ''Film/{{Nocturna}}'''s Moka spends the whole movie working on one. [[spoiler:Aside from his insatiable coffee habit, literally every action he takes, down to the last breath, is calculated to put Tim in a situation where his only option is to overcome his fear of the dark, which will save the night from certain doom]].
* In ''Disney/TheHunchbackOfNotreDame'' [[BigBad Frollo]] tells Quasimodo that he has troops ready to capture Esmeralda at the Court of Miracles. [[RivalsTeamUp Quasimodo and Phoebus]] go to warn her first. Frollo is there as well; he didn't know where the court was but [[TrickAndFollowPloy knew they would lead him to it]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Films -- Live Action]]
* ''Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan''.
-->'''Kirk:''' Khan, I'm ''laughing'' at the "superior intellect".
** Noteworthy in that it's implied that Khan's perfectly aware that he's being blinded by his own hatred, and simply doesn't care anymore, so long as Kirk suffers.
* The second ''StarWars'' trilogy (and arguably the whole saga) is perhaps a huge BatmanGambit; essentially, Palpatine/Sidious is planning the Sith revenge against the Jedi. In doing so, he manipulates virtually every character to make his plan work: first, the Trade Federation blockading his home planet, knowing the Republic bureaucracy would drag its heels; then, gets Padmé to call for a "vote of no-confidence" against the sitting supreme chancellor, to get himself elected. Next, he manipulates multiple commercial and nationalist interests into forming the Confederacy of Independent Systems. Back to Padmé, getting her to leave Coruscant "for her safety" after an assassination attempt; then her proxy, gullible Jar-Jar Binks, into pushing the Senate to grant him the emergency powers to form the Grand Army. Then, he manipulated (through apprentice Darth Tyranus) Jedi master Sifo-Dyas into ordering a massive clone army. He manipulates Anakin: presenting himself as a fatherly figure, unlike the stern Jedi Order, he makes Anakin likelier to trust his advice; uses his fear of loss to bring him closer, and gets him to kill Tyranus, pushing him closer to TheDarkSide; when the Jedi are about to out him as a Sith , Palpatine turns it to his advantage: by not beating Windu he plays on Anakin's sympathy and convinces him to "disarm" Windu, making it easier to turn Anakin to the Dark Side. With Anakin ready, Palpatine executes Order 66. He then uses his "new" appearance to justify ordering the Grand Army to turn on the Jedi: a Jedi plot to take over the Republic.
** This could be a XanatosGambit, at least once he became Chancellor. If the Jedi actually succeeded in discovering his control of the republic, what could they do? Any attempt at removing him from office by force would have looked exactly like a Jedi plot to take over the republic, resulting in massive backlash. Oh, and furthermore, it would have looked like that to Anakin as well, possibly causing the birth of Vader anyway.
** This extends into the original trilogy as well. When Sidious learns that "Skywalker" destroyed the Death Star, he concludes Anakin's child survived, a possibility he did not foresee. Seeing a way to turn this to his advantage, he orders Vader to find Luke so that he may turn him, potentially more powerful than Vader, into his new apprentice (unbeknownst to him, Vader already knew of Luke's existence and was planning to do the same thing to Palpatine). He also allowed the Rebel Alliance to learn the location of the new Death Star and its shield generator in order to trap them, knowing they could not pass up an opportunity to attack while he was personally inspecting it. The only flaw in his plan was underestimating Luke's resolve. Luke refuses to turn, forcing Palpatine to try to kill him, which ''accidentally'' manipulated Vader ''again'': [[ThickerThanWater his desire to protect his family triggered his fall, and now triggered his redemption.]] Oh, and he also did not take into account the possibility that the local race of {{Ridiculously Cute Critter}}s could [[RockBeatsLaser defeat his army]].
** It could be argued that the entire series is a BatmanGambit by the Force, in which Anakin is driven to the Dark Side, and Luke is carefully manipulated until they're both in the right place and the right state of mind for Vader to off Palpatine and restore balance.
*** Palapatine's whole plan may have been a (failed) XanatosGambit to prepare the galaxy for the Yuuzah Vong, going by the EU. OR a Batman Gambit by the FORCE to do the same thing...
** Might not qualify as a BatmanGambit or GambitRoulette, since Palpatine's plans didn't really hinge on any particular person doing what he needed. He was playing both sides. Had the Republic not formed the Grand Army, the CIS would have won with Palpatine as their leader. He didn't actually need Padme, Anakin, Mace Windu, etc to do anything special. At most, their actions expedited his plans.
* Hans Gruber's planned theft in ''Film/DieHard'' is completely dependent on the FBI cutting electrical power (per standard procedure), which disables the final, magnetic lock on the Nakatomi Plaza vault.
** Hans's brother, Simon, uses this in ''Die Hard with a Vengeance'', thus proving the Batman Gambit is hereditary. He leads the police on a wild goose chase, making them think he's setting off bombs to get revenge on John [=McClane=] for killing his brother, when the bombs are a mere distraction to keep the NYPD away from him while he puts his ''real'' plan into motion: robbing the Federal Reserve. He's only undone because he stupidly went back to the same truckstop that he bought aspirin for his migraines (which he then proceeded to give to [=McClane=] as a joke).
*** And the original ending (viewable on DVD as an alternative) wasn't nearly as asinine.
* [[SmugSnake General Koskov]] in ''TheLivingDaylights'' has a lot on his plate: a phony KGB defection, two fake assassination attempts (one carried out by his girlfriend), a couple of kidnappings, a few ''real'' assassinations, and a weapons-for-opium smuggling operation. All of which would have left [=MI6=] looking like idiots, his rival in the Soviet military dead and discredited, his girlfriend StuffedIntoTheFridge and himself very, very rich, if it wasn't for that meddling [[JamesBond 007]]....
* In ''Film/TheWickerMan'', Sgt. Howie arrives at [[TownWithADarkSecret the island of Summerisle]] to [[CallToAdventure solve the mystery]] of a missing child; [[CorruptHick the suspicious nature of the citizens]] convince him that they're going to [[VirginSacrifice sacrifice the girl]] to [[ReligionOfEvil appease the sun god]]. Unfortunately, TheChase to halt this event is actually [[BaitAndSwitch a trick]], causing him to unwittingly act out some archetypal ritual, and then [[AFeteWorseThanDeath burn him to death]] in the eponymous structure. Why? It turns out Howie was [[ChasteHero saving himself for marriage]], too. Luckily, the girl is saved. [[spoiler: Not that she was in any real danger.]]
** [[spoiler: The islanders were even gracious enough to offer Howie at least 4 ways out. 3 different beautiful women try to seduce him which would have rendered the "virgin sacrifice" impossible. And when those fail, the innkeeper and his daughter try to drug him unconscious, since he has to go to the sacrifice of his own free will, which he can't do if he sleeps through it. Hell if he'd gotten Lord Summerisle's permission to search the island instead of demanding everything under police authority, the "with the power of a king" part might have been invalidated, too. He must have been really predictable, because it almost seemed like the islanders didn't want to do it.]]
* The ending of ''SupermanII'' hinges on LexLuthor selling out Superman and telling Zod about the "take away all super powers" device... which Superman had set to affect everyone ''outside'' the device, having seen this coming.
* Another master of plan B would be Tony Wendice from ''DialMForMurder''. This trope is actually subverted a few times as Tony is never quite able to anticipate everything that will happen, despite his incredibly intricate schemes. The bulk of the film is set up by the failure of his first one: having blackmailed a classmate turned two bit crook into killing his cheating wife Margot and set up a perfect alibi for himself alongside Mark, the man who she was cheating on him with, Margot's will to live is a bit too strong and she ends up killing the man in their desperate struggle. Tony spends the rest of the film trying to make it look like she killed the man in cold blood rather than self defense, wildly improvising whenever someone is about to send it all crashing down again. This is all even {{lampshade|Hanging}}d early on when Mark, a novelist who specializes in just this kind of story, notes that he would never try one in real life because there will always be just one little thing that no one can anticipate.
* ''PiratesOfTheCaribbean'': Like BugsBunny, Captain Jack Sparrow is a [[TheChessmaster master]] of the Batman Gambit, but when it [[SpannerInTheWorks backfires]] on him, it's a [[DidntSeeThatComing sight to behold]]. It's unclear whether he plans it all out ahead of time, or [[IndyPloy makes it up as he goes along,]] though. [[XanatosSpeedChess Probably both.]]
* In JohnCarpenter's ''Film/TheThing'', the alien puppet whose identity isn't discovered until near the end of the film is executing a Batman Gambit from early on. Given how paranoid and trigger happy everyone was, he could have been shot or [[spoiler: Mac could have let him go when he asked, although it could be argued that his insistence that he had calmed down was intentionally unconvincing]]
* In ''{{Heat}}'', [=McCauley's=] crew meet up in a particular location seemingly to paint it as their next target, as well as to map out the viable escape routes, while Hanna's team surveys their activities secretly. When Hanna and his team later assemble on the same location to break down the gameplan of [=McCauley's=] crew, they quickly discover the worthlessness of the target location, as well as the absence of any effective escape routes. Hanna then realizes that [=McCauley's=] plan all along was to get his team out in the open so that the latter could get a good glimpse of the men pursuing them.
* In ''MaryPoppins'', the title character (apparently) pulls this on Mr. Banks. First, she puts the idea in his head that he should take his children on an outing to the bank. Then she tells the children all about the bird woman, whose hang out is conveniently on the way to the bank, and how cool it would be to give her their money. What ensues could only have been Mary's plan.
* In the Belgian short film ''Tanghi Argentini'', Andre, the protagonist, in lieu of purchasing Christmas presents for his single coworkers, cruises dating sites for women whose interests correspond to his coworker's skills (i.e. tango, poetry). He then approaches the coworker and asks to be taught this particular skill in time for a blind date he has arranged with the woman. On the night of the date, he asks his coworker to accompany and discreetly coach him. He then deliberately fails at this skill, allowing the coworker to swoop in and "steal" the woman with his superior knowledge.
* In the finale of ''GranTorino'', [[spoiler:Walt Kowalski [[ThanatosGambit tricks the Hmong gang into]] [[TearJerker gunning down an unarmed elderly man (Walt himself)]] [[HeroicSacrifice in front of a neighborhood of witnesses]]]].
* The eponymous protagonist of ''Film/TheBourneSeries'' is a master at these, one of his favorite methods being to deliberately get himself red-flagged on the grid in order to facilitate a particular agenda. {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d in ''Supremacy'' by Nicky Parsons when she corrects an overzealous agent that assumes Bourne is slipping when they detect him in Naples, asserting that operatives like himself ''always'' have an objective to their actions. Pamela Landy, having attained some form of {{Genre Savvy}}ness with regards to Bourne by the time of ''Ultimatum'', was able to deduce his intentions when he uses the same tactic again in the film's climax.
* [[TomCruise Ethan Hunt]] does something similar in the first ''Film/MissionImpossible'' to clear his name after his team's mission goes horribly wrong, including [[spoiler:actually stealing the item he's accused of stealing]] and finally by staying on the phone much longer than he has to to make sure that IMF headquarters can trace the call and find out where he is. This also gets {{lampshade|Hanging}}d: "He wanted us to know he was in London."
** Even more notable is the fact that all this time, [[spoiler:Phelps and Claire have been running one on ''him''.]]
* After a baffling succession of double- and triple-crosses the big [[TheReveal reveal]] scene of the WWII movie ''Film/WhereEaglesDare'' shows that the whole film has been a massive BatmanGambit engineered by [=MI-6=]. [[spoiler:They fake the crash of an important general in Germany so they have an excuse to send a team of important agents in to rescue him. The rescue team gets itself captured, which means the three known German [[TheMole moles]] deliberately placed on the team will reveal themselves. The team leader then identifies himself as a German agent too (he is in fact a triple agent, a ReverseMole pretending to be an ordinary Mole, but the Germans don't know that), and claims that the three real moles were discovered by the British (true) and have been replaced (not true). In attempting to prove they are the real moles, the German agents write a list of all the spies they recruited in their time in Britain. ''This'' is the real objective of the operation, and having got the list the team escapes back to Britain.]]. Brain hurting yet?
** ''But to the British, very, very simple.''
** It gets better! The intelligence Colonel who set this whole plan up? [[spoiler:''Also'' a German spy, sacrificing the others as a gambit to ensure his own survival as the spy hunt closes in. It does him no good: [[TheChessmaster Admiral Rolland]] already suspected him and let the plan go ahead so he could expose everybody in one go, [[HoistByHisOwnPetard Colonel Turner included]].]]
* ''Film/MyFellowAmericans'': It turns out that [[spoiler:the events were all orchestrated by the vice-president to get the current president impeached so he could become president.]]
* In ''{{Chicago}}'', Billy Flynn manages a rather ingenious BatmanGambit of his own. [[spoiler:He fabricates entries in Roxie's diary that state her guilt in an overly-blatant manner and sends it to Mama Morton, knowing that she'll give it to Velma. Knowing, thusly, that Velma will give it to D.A. Harrison, and that Harrison will be so eager to take Roxie and Billy down that he'll make a deal with Velma for the "evidence". And then Flynn builds up a massive mid-trial accusation of Harrison having fabricated the entries himself, since they're so obviously false. In one fell swoop, knowing exactly how everyone will react, Billy manages to get both Roxie and Velma off the hook while taking down his primary rival in the legal arena. Bruce Wayne would be proud...or furious.]]
** It goes further than that, too. [[spoiler: Billy gets Amos to divorce Roxie so there can be a dramatic courtroom reconciliation, knowing he actually will do this. Among other things. Billy is a MagnificentBastard]].
* In ''Film/GIJoeTheRiseOfCobra'', [=McCullen=]'s master plan is actually a pretty good one, to create global fear of terrorism so the entire world will seek unifying leadership from the most powerful man on the planet. Duke wrongly assumes that [=McCullen=] delusionally thinks he's that man. Nope, it's [[spoiler: the President of the United States]], who's really [=McCullen=]'s man Zartan.
* In ''TheSilenceOfTheLambs'', Hannibal Lecter's [[spoiler:entire escape is one big Batman Gambit. His scheme, in short, was to escape from his handcuffs (using a homemade key he smuggled in) while his guards were in the cell delivering his dinner, handcuff one guard to the bars, take out the other one, kill the first one, cut the face off the other one, switch clothes with him, throw the body on top of the elevator (Lecter was on the top floor of the building), set the elevator to move down the floors, wear the cops face over his own like a mask, lie down, lure the rest of the cops to him by firing his gun into the air, then get taken out of the building on a stretcher by paramedics while the SWAT team focuses on the body on the elevator. The possibility of things fucking up is endless, from the guards refusing to bring him dinner, the guard putting the tray down on the other side of his cell, to having his key discovered, to being found out impersonating the cop. And while he was preoccupied with this, he managed to disembowel the other cop and hang him ornamentally from the bars of his cage like a giant butterfly, since that's what Buffalo Bill is all about. For kicks.]]
** [[spoiler:None of which would have been possible if he hadn't gotten transferred to Memphis due to Clarice's offering of a deal the FBI was never going to honor, and if the daughter of a Tennessee Senator hadn't been kidnapped.]]
* Mr. Boddy employs one of these in ''{{Film/Clue}}''. [[spoiler: TheButlerDidIt. Sort of. Wadsworth was Mr. Boddy the entire time; the one that was killed was actually his butler. His entire plan involved getting his houseguests, that he had been blackmailing, to kill off his informants, now a liability, and destroy all of the evidence against him. Clearly his scheme would've backfired had one of the guests taken the fake Mr. Boddy's advice and killed him instead, or not killed anyone at all. In the end, he almost succeeded, if not for the ReverseMole.]]
* Clyde Shelton's "[[{{Revenge}} justice]]" in ''LawAbidingCitizen'' relies on a number of these, notable perhaps for how all their sometimes implausible ingenuity they are ''not'' {{Xanatos Gambit}}s. (Of course, it's possible in some cases he did have a back-up plan, but at other times it seems highly unlikely.)
** [[spoiler: Catch Darby by having him panic and helping him escape.]] Relied precisely on knowing how he would react. Specifically, [[spoiler: Darby, instead of forcing the "police officer" to drive using his own gun, may have gotten in the other side and pulled the "officer" out of the car instead. He also may have been carrying a second gun.]]
** [[spoiler: Murdering his cellmate to be put into solitary confinement. What if Rice or that other guy had paid attention when their informant told them it must have been a Batman Gambit (or just figured it out themselves, it wasn't that hard), and had taken him out of there and/or searched the cell thoroughly? The funny thing is that they ''did'' figure out Clyde had some sort of elaborate plot, but didn't think he'd be able to do anything from jail and he must've had an accomplice on the outside.]]
** [[spoiler: Murdering the judge with an explosive cell phone.]] Very likely to succeed, though, since who wouldn't take the call like that?
** [[spoiler: Let me go by six o'clock tomorrow or I'll kill everyone (with exploding cars). Failure conditions: If they ''had'' checked the gas tanks as well, or one of the people leaving would have got the same paranoid feeling as I did that the cars might explode or something, or if they ''had let him free''.]] The last might actually have crippled his ability to run the show, but he would've "won" by getting them to abandon the law. Of course... it wasn't very likely anyway.
** In the end, points for the only real ''{{Xanatos|Gambit}}''[[XanatosGambit Gambit]] or reasonable semblance thereof goes to Nick Rice: [[spoiler: Either he could talk Shelton out of detonating the bomb and save his soul or something, or Shelton would just unknowingly blow up himself with it, creating the somewhat gratuitous TwistEnding.]]
* In ''ThePostmanAlwaysRingsTwice'', a woman and her lover are tried for killing her husband. The prosecutor tries a Batman Gambit to get them to turn on each other by only putting one of them, the woman on trial. The woman's defense attorney then does a Batman Gambit of his own to get her from confessing everything and he gets her off on probation.
* Rare nonhuman example: In ''Film/DeepBlueSea'', the intelligent sharks not only find away to get loose in the part-flooded interior of the floating research station, but they [[spoiler: herd the humans in such a way that they keep flooding additional parts of the complex, causing it to sink so low that the sharks will be able to swim out of the fenced-in lagoon and into the ocean]].
* ''{{Film/Inception}}'' has a rather elaborate one; since the team trying to incept an idea into Fischer's mind stumbled across larger problems, [[spoiler:Cobb ends up tricking Fischer into participating in the inception by making him believe that his godfather is the one infiltrating his mind.]] It would increase the danger for all since Fischer is the subject, meaning that his subconscious would act up after having attention called to the fact that Fischer is in a dream.
* In the ''NineteenEightyFour'' parody ''Me and the Big Guy'', the end implies that the annoyingly happy-go-lucky Citizen 43275-B was trying to annoy Big Brother so much that he would kill the telescreen, allowing him to write his diary in peace.
* In ''LeSamourai'', a hitman plants himself outside his (married) girlfriend's apartment, waiting for her husband to come home before leaving to perform a hit. The hitman is later brought in for questioning by the police and his girlfriend and her husband are brought in to identify him. The husband (suspicious of him sleeping with his wife) picks him out of a lineup, assuming he's fingering him for a crime, when in reality he's offering him an airtight alibi for the killing.
* In ''{{PCU}}'', the school president slaps The Pit with money they owe the school. She anticipates that they would throw a wild party, thus causing the politically correct students to file enough complaints to throw out The Pit.
* ThePunisher manages one in [[Film/ThePunisher his first film]], manipulating the crime lord who had his family killed. [[spoiler:Frankie planted evidence that the crime lord's wife and secretly gay right-hand man were having an affair, leading to the crime boss directly killing the right-hand man and hurling his wife onto a railway track.]]
* The sci-fi film ''Film/HunterPrey'' features one on the part of the aforementioned prey.
* The entire plot of ''StreetKings'' depends on [[spoiler: TheHero being a [[{{Badass}} Killing Machine]] that will kill all the [[DirtyCop corrupt cops]] that he finds without being killed or [[BuyThemOff bought]], and he does.]] The gambiteer claims this was a XanatosGambit but [[spoiler: it's clearly not as the UnwittingPawn is [[DespairEventHorizon almost killed and buried]] in the process.]]
* TheManWhoNeverWas tells a fictionalized version of Operation Mincemeat from the RealLife section.
* The end of noir film ''The Racket'' has one that hinges on a criminal ''really'' not wanting to be thrown under the bus, a corrupt judge being suggestible and venal, and a crooked cop wanting to cover his back. Summed up by a surprised [[UnwittingPawn participant]] afterwards:
--> "You mean you thought all this through?!"
* Every single fight scene in the Guy Ritchie ''Film/SherlockHolmes'' films is a BatmanGambit in miniature; we are treated to Holmes' inner monologue as he determines exactly how his opponents will behave and how he can best counter them, immediately followed by the actual fight in which the opponent behaves exactly as Holmes deduced he would and Holmes thus wins the fight. Subverted in the climax of ''A Game of Shadows''; Holmes and Moriarty play this trick on each other, and both determine that there's no way for Holmes to win, [[spoiler:until Holmes does something neither one expected, sacrificing himself to kill Moriarty by grabbing him and jumping off the balcony into the Reichenbach Falls below.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* The absolute master in the ''Literature/{{Romance of the Three Kingdoms}}'' saga is TheStrategist Zhuge Liang, though he's also rivaled by fellow [[TheChessmaster chessmasters]] Sima Yi, Zhou Yu and Pang Tong. One could argue pseudo-villain Cao "That's ''exactly'' what I was thinking!" Cao also has his moments of Batman inspiration.
** And as for the classic example: the "Empty Fortress" strategy employed in the novel by Zhuge Liang when he had to defend a fort against Sima Yi: Zhuge Liang simply ''[[RefugeInAudacity opened the gates and played a zither on the wall.]]'' Naturally, Sima Yi suspected a trap and retreated, because... Oh, come on, it's Zhuge Freaking Liang! He's got to have a trap somewhere! [[spoiler: The fortress really was empty, and it only worked because Zhuge Liang ''knew that Sima Yi would be naturally suspicious of him.'']]
** Another incident is where Cao Cao is escaping from the Battle of Red Cliffs, and has to choose between a wider path and a narrow one, with smoke trails coming from the latter. Cao Cao chooses the ''obviously trap-laden'' narrow path. His logic? It's one of Zhuge Liang's tricks to keep him on the wide one. He's almost right: Zhuge Liang, ''knowing that Cao Cao would use that line of reasoning'', had set the ambush up on the narrow path.
** If the traditional tales are to be believed, Zhuge Liang goes so far as to do this to people ''on his side,'' including his lord Liu Bei's sworn brother, Zhang Fei. The legend goes that Zhang Fei believed that Liu Bei treated Zhuge Liang, an untested scholar, far too well above his own veteran generals. Zhuge Liang, hearing of this, asked Zhang Fei what could be done to prove himself. Zhang Fei, due to go to a city on business for a day, insisted that Zhuge Liang would be smart enough to predict his next three meals or be dismissed from Liu Bei's service. Zhuge Liang agreed, wrote down his prediction on the spot, and sealed it in a bag, given to Zhang Fei's sworn brother Guan Yu. Zhang Fei went on his task, and upon entering the city, thought that Zhuge Liang would know of his habit for meat and wine, and avoided it, instead eating a local childhood favorite of his, green onions wrapped in fried dough. The next day, he realized that Zhuge Liang would know where he had been raised and what he would have eaten in his youth, and decided to try and fool the strategist by wrapping the fried dough inside the onions instead. Concluding his business, dinner time came and while he was hungry, Zhang Fei again thought of the wager, and Zhuge Liang's cunning. Certain that he could win, he rushed back to Liu Bei's camp, where he found a feast waiting for his return, organized by Zhuge Liang. Zhang Fei tried to claim he'd already eaten, but Zhuge Liang asked Guan Yu to read the prediction.
--> ''General Zhang Fei will enter the city but will ignore meat and wine, as that is his normal way, and eat green onions wrapped in dough. The next day he will think to change and win the wager, and eat dough wrapped in green onions. General Zhang Fei will come back not having eaten in the city, and thus have no third meal at all.''\\
If Zhang Fei hadn't [[IKnowYouKnowIKnow overthought it]], or just been TheAlcoholic BigEater like usual, he would have won the bet easily.
** Cao Cao gets one himself at Wuchao granaries. First, Cao Cao undertakes the mother of all {{False Flag Operation}}s and burns down the food supplies of his rival, Yuan Shao. Yuan Shao responds by reasoning that Cao Cao will have focused everything on the raid, and that his main camp will be weak. So he sends out a force to take out Cao Cao's main camp and cut off the retreat of the raiding force, including Cao Cao himself. At this point, news reaches him that the defending garrison was victorious, and he adds the forces that were meant to reinforce it to the attack on Cao Cao's main camp. This was all according to Cao Cao's plan. The garrison had not held out: the messengers that told Yuan Shao that were Cao soldiers dressed in the stolen uniforms. Cao wanted the force attacking his main camp to be as large as possible: he had an ambush waiting for them and wanted to get as many enemies as possible. Two of Yuan Shao's best generals were forced to surrender when they were completely cut off from their leader.
* In ''Double, Double'' / ''The Case of the Seven Murders'', part of the villain's plan depends on the detective identifying the pattern and convincing victim #5 he will be next, adding a number of omens to further frighten the superstitious victim, so that he would make out his will to the killer. Subverted in that the killer overdoes it, the victim changes his will again, then everything spirals out of control as another person figures things out, necessitating two more murders.
* Cathy in ''EastOfEden'' has a gift for seeing people's weaknesses and the sociopathy needed to manipulate them. It's a repeated theme through the book that she'll mention an idea, it will spread and become other people's beliefs, but no one will remember it originated from her. (Ex:'s The ministed who committed suicide had trouble in Boston, they should jar their own fruits at the whorehouse, etc.)
* The plan to capture [[spoiler:David]] in ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' relies entirely on him behaving the way they expect, [[spoiler:as well as him not realizing that Tobias is still alive]]. At various points, he could have broken character and foiled the plan, but he never does. Marco later attempts this in order to thwart the two Vissers, but this one doesn't go quite as well.
* In IsaacAsimov's ''{{Foundation}}'' series, Hari Seldon basically sets up centuries worth of Batman Gambit in advance, using statistics. Somewhat subverted when it turns out that he actually left behind a secret Second Foundation to keep history working precisely according to his plan.
** And of course in ''Second Foundation'' the eponymous organization [[spoiler:pulls off one themselves when they trick the First Foundationers into believing the Second Foundation is on Terminus rather than Trantor]].
** And in the various prequels/sequels it's revealed that [[spoiler:the whole thing... including the 10,000 year old Galactic Empire itself... was a millennia-long Batman Gambit by Robot Daneel Olivaw designed to ensure that he could remain operative to protect humanity as a whole]].
* Steven Brust's ''[[{{Dragaera}} Jhereg]]'' has an unusual take on this; the villain sets up a careful scheme designed to get the protagonist to ''[[MyDeathIsJustTheBeginning kill him]]'', under circumstances which will start a bloody war between two noble houses he hates.
** Considering that ''{{Dragaera}}'' has [[PlanetOfHats an entire Great House]] of Xanatos Gambitters in the Yendi, this also gets used in several other books. Particularly notable are ''Yendi'' itself, where the Sorceress in Green and Sethra the Younger have been screwing with the internal politics of House Dragon to make sure the latter becomes Warlord when the new Emperor/Empress takes over, and ''Phoenix'', where ''the Goddess Verra'' uses Vlad in a plot to try to [[spoiler:calm the Teckla uprisings by starting a war with another country to get them to unite against a common enemy]]. The latter didn't work out very well.
* LoisMcMasterBujold's [[Literature/VorkosiganSaga Miles Vorkosigan]] usually starts out with one of these, then rapidly devolves into {{Indy Ploy}}s. What makes him good is his amazing ability to convince people that he meant to do that.
** Miles' protege, Elli Quinn, in a "What would Miles do?" moment says: "Never do yourself, what you can con an expert into doing for you."
*** Miles learned the lesson from an older, female counterpart Cavilo in ''The Vor Game''.
---->'''Cavilo:''' The key to strategy...is not to choose a path to victory, but to choose so that '''all''' paths lead to a victory.
**** He furthermore learned from her that making all paths lead to victory only works so long as only one of those paths is taken, convincing him to use his strategy of only picking one stratagem at a time while making everyone believe that he has elaborate interlocking plans.
* There are a number of examples of Batman Gambits within OrsonScottCard's ''Literature/EndersGame'' and its sequels. Most of these are done by the protagonists, though one antagonist, Achilles, becomes well known for these. In the final battle of ''Literature/EndersGame'', Ender makes use of the enemy's dual expectations, that no one would ever kill a queen and that humans are rational and will try to survive any battle, as well as the fact that the enemy is distracted trying to manage all of its ships, in order to slip some fighters in close to the planet and destroy both it and the enemy fleets in a single blow. This is a fairly convoluted set of circumstances, all of which are needed for the plan to work, and so it does come near being a GambitRoulette.
** Subverted at the end of ''Shadow Puppets'': the super-intelligent Bean correctly intuits that Achilles has him marked down for a Batman Gambit, and [[spoiler:asks himself what he (Bean) ''wouldn't'' be likely to do. The answer: ignore every negotiating ploy of Achilles's, walk up to him, and [[MundaneSolution pop a cap in him]] -- which he does.]]
* GKChesterton's Father Brown story ''The Sins of Prince Saradine'': Saradine has two enemies, one a blackmailer, and the other seeking revenge. He then gives everything he has to the blackmailer, and informs the other of his location. The avenger kills the blackmailer and willingly accepts execution.
* Stephen Donaldson's ''{{Chronicles of Thomas Covenant}}'' are almost entirely guided by Lord Foul the Despiser. For example, the first book, ''Lord Foul's Bane'', involves a band of heroes fighting and defeating a mad sorcerer... thus allowing Foul to acquire a powerful artifact that the sorcerer had been guarding.
** The ''Chronicles'' are ''littered'' with Batman gambits. The above by Lord Foul the Despiser; Thomas Covenant's plan to give Lord Foul his ring, and thus the power to destroy everything and free himself, Covenant gambling on the assumption that Foul would kill him with it first, and thus leave Covenant in a position to absorb any attack it made on the Arch of Time with his own soul....
* ArthurConanDoyle's SherlockHolmes often uses small-scale Batman Gambits to trap criminals or get information he requires. In the course of the stories, he does everything from plant false reports in the media, to put on disguises, to fake his own death, ''twice'', in order to solve the various cases he handles. He's even gone so far as to lie to and manipulate Watson and his clients if necessary, although usually not in a way that puts them in danger.
** Backfired in ''A Scandal in Bohemia'' when Irene Adler figured out what he had done and who he was.
** Many of his deductions are a sort of retroactive Batman Gambit: after the fact, he deduces the "only possible way" that characters could have acted and events could have played out. Any number of alternate possibilities always exist, but are never acknowledged.
* In AlexandreDumas' ''TheThreeMusketeers'', Milady de Winter's ability to pull off Batman Gambits is what makes her formidable -- if she's unable to carry out an assassination she can just get someone else to do it for her. Cardinal Richelieu is the story's XanatosGambit specialist.
* Speaking of Dumas, can we say ''TheCountOfMonteCristo''? Oh, yes we can. Dantes got imprisoned due to this trope, and after his escape, he lives and breathes it for the remainder of the book.
** [[spoiler: And it is certainly a series of these gambits and not [[XanatosGambit the other kind]] since we also get to see several of his gambits run out of control and almost destroy some innocents he wasn't aiming at and had to protect. Resulting in a near [[HeroicBSOD breakdown and loss of faith]] at the end of the book and realizing that he really isn't [[AGodIAm Providence]]. Fortunately, his loyal Greek Princess bails him out with a love admission.]]
* ''Everything'' that happens in NeilGaiman's ''Literature/AmericanGods'' from the first page onwards turns out to have been [[spoiler: staged by the gods Loki and Odin -- [[StevenUlyssesPerhero a.k.a. Low Key Lyesmith and Mr. Wednesday]] --]] right up to, and including, the ''war'' between the old and new gods.
* In ''ArtemisFowl'', the title character ends his encounter with the [=LEPrecon=] with a BatmanGambit, using the regulations of the organization to maneuver everything into place for his escape, though he kindly leaves some of the money behind.
** Or perhaps he had another reason for returning some of the gold...
** The subsequent books continue the pattern of Artemis manipulating the hell out of everyone and everything to further his goals. Subsequent books have had other characters trying to run {{Xanatos Gambit}}s against him, but Artemis has generally accounted for these possibilities. Unusually, unlike many portrayals of gambits, we get to see at least a small fraction of what goes into making them and how Artemis essentially plans for multiple possibilities. When plan A fails he'll revert to plan B and the reader will actually be told that's what's happening rather than being led to believe that Artemis is just omniscient. This portrayal, plus the fact that the success of these plans still owes a good deal to luck and assistance from friends is what keeps the later books out of the realm of GambitRoulette.
* Nearly everything that comes out of the Bene Gesserit from Frank Herbert's ''{{Dune}}'', either on an individual or a planetary level, is some form of Batman Gambit, but the Baron Harkonnen proves just as capable of executing one of his own; the course of action that the Duke Leto took to gain Arrakis, which eventually killed him, was the result of the Baron's successful Batman Gambit against him.
** The Bene Gesserit also throw in a heaping helpful of CrazyPrepared. They set up the Missionaria Protectiva to seed planets with a specific belief system, so that if necessary a Bene Gessirt could use the myths and prophecies to set up their own BatmanGambit as needed.
** And the Baron's plan only worked because Yueh was executing his own Batman Gambit, knowing the Baron would want to gloat over the Duke's capture gave him the opportunity to equip the Duke with a tool to assassinate the Baron. Plans within plans indeed.
* In Jamie Malanowski's ''The Coup'', a US Vice-President engineers one of the most brilliant government ousters ever seen. He plays '''everybody''' like cards in a deck and does it with such panache that you find yourself cheering for the MagnificentBastard.
* Baroness Orczy's ''Literature/TheScarletPimpernel'' and its sequels are loaded with these, as Chauvelin uses the tactic (as an attempted XanatosGambit) and the title character responds. The entire ending scheme in the original ''The Scarlet Pimpernel'' relies on the French buying into their own anti-Semitic tendencies; this is usually dropped from adaptations, such as the musical.
* K.J. Parker's ''Engineer'' trilogy is one big gambit by the title figure, [[spoiler: who manipulates nations just so he can go home to his wife and child.]] Arguably a GambitRoulette, except that he made use of luck, but could have gotten by without it; "it'd have taken longer and needed a lot more effort, but [he] would have got there in the end."
* K.J. Parker's ''[[TheScavengerTrilogy Scavenger Trilogy]]'': Ciartan's war on the crows, which is symbolic of the several deep conspiracies which depend on getting inside the head of the enemy.
* TerryPratchett's ''{{Discworld}}'': Vetinari. As Moist reflects: "It was bad enough being a puppet, but then he arranges it so you pull your own strings."
** In ''Discworld/GuardsGuards'', [[spoiler:Vetinari specifically set up the deepest, darkest dungeon in his palace so that when he was inevitably thrown in there he'd be in perfect security. The locks are on the inside...]]
** Vetinari seems to mix these with {{Xanatos Gambit}}s. It's just about impossible to tell which type of gambit he's using in any given situation.
** In ''Discworld/MenAtArms'', Vetinari seemingly gives into the demands of the Assassins' and Fools' Guilds by forbidding Vimes from investigating the theft and the string of murders that followed, but he knows full well that doing so will only cause Vimes to redouble his efforts. [[spoiler:It briefly backfires on him when he tells Vimes to [[TurnInYourBadge turn in his badge]] -- in the middle of a conversation with someone else, he realizes he likely [[HeroicBSOD broke Vimes' spirit]] instead of galvanizing it, because Vimes didn't put his fist in the wall after leaving.]]
** Vimes, too, particularly in ''Discworld/NightWatch''. At one point he wonders whether Vetinari "felt this way ''all the time''".
*** Unlike Vetinari, Vimes [[spoiler: actually did know the future.]] Less of a BatmanGambit, more of a [[spoiler:Reverse Cassandra]].
** Lord Rust, in ''Discworld/{{Jingo}}'', illustrates how spectacularly this can go wrong.
** Death pulls this a few times with his granddaughter Susan. Usually because she can go places and do things that he cannot. See ''Discworld/{{Hogfather}}'' and ''Discworld/ThiefOfTime'' for examples.
** Minor characters also invoke this trope, as when Glod Glodson from ''Discworld/SoulMusic'' needs to speak to the Librarian, and asks some student wizards where "the monkey" is. In hope of seeing Glod pounded into pulp, they lead him there directly, encouraging him to act like a monkey when they get there. Instead, Glod respectfully tells the Librarian that the ''students'' just [[BerserkButton called him a monkey]]. And muses to himself that they'd have told him to push off if he'd asked about an ape.
*** Could actually qualify as a XanatosGambit, as helpful students would've corrected Glod's use of "monkey" to begin with, while the pranksters' response played into his trick.
* Duke Edmund Talbot's battle strategies in JohnRingo's ''CouncilWars'' series tend to involve this, combined with never telling ''anyone'', even his closest aides and allies, his plans makes it nigh-impossible for his enemies to predict his actions. Which is the whole point.
* In JKRowling's ''Literature/HarryPotter'' saga, Batman Gambits are used many times:
** ''HarryPotter/{{Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets}}'': [[spoiler:Riddle]] attacked four students, including one of Harry's best friends, and then kidnapped his best friend's little sister and future LoveInterest Ginny Weasley to make Harry go into the Chamber, because he wanted to meet the boy who had defeated his future self, and talk to him. Oh, and kill him too.
** ''HarryPotter/{{Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire}}'': when Voldemort arranged for Harry to compete in the Triwizard Tournament, what he wanted was not to get him killed in the process, as everyone thought. He wanted Harry to survive all the tasks and win the Tournament, so he could kidnap him and use his blood to regenerate his body. There's also one Batman Gambit that fails: [[spoiler:fake-Moody]] surreptitiously gives Neville the information Harry will need to pass the Second Task, assuming that Harry will ask help from ''everyone''. However, Harry doesn't, so [[spoiler:fake-Moody]] has to find another way of making that information reach Harry.
*** Not in [[TheFilmOfTheBook the movie]], where Neville willingly gives the info to Harry. ([[PragmaticAdaptation Because it not only shortens the plot, but makes Dobby's presence even less necessary.]])
** ''HarryPotter/{{Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix}}'': Voldemort creates a false vision to trick Harry into believing he has Sirius trapped in the Hall of Prophecy, correctly guessing Harry would go to rescue him, finding the Prophecy instead, which Voldemort's Death Eaters could then steal. Previously, however, there is another failed attempt: Voldemort first just shows Harry where the Prophecy is, believing his curiosity would make him go and get it, but Harry actually ''doesn't know anything'' about it, so he doesn't even know what he's seeing.
** Harry himself pulls off one of these in ''HarryPotter/{{Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince}}'': when Ron is having self-esteem problems that get in the way of his Quidditch performance before the first match of the year, Harry makes Hermione and (with her unknowing help) Ron believe that he spiked his pumpkin juice with luck potion, just by trying to "hide" the little bottle, and pointing out some lucky coincidences. Ron, believing that nothing can go wrong that day, plays spectacularly, and ''then'' Harry reveals that [[MagicFeather he did it all by himself]]. However, it leads to a row between Ron and Hermione that Harry didn't foresee.
** Basically everything Dumbledore does is part of two huge Batman Gambits: one of these, [[spoiler:training Harry and keeping him alive "so that he can die at the right moment"]] is successful. The other one -- luckily -- fails: [[spoiler:a Batman Gambit that would let him die undefeated so the Elder Wand would lose his power, but Draco disarms him, winning the Wand's allegiance. This makes it possible for Harry to become its true Master later and use it to defeat Voldemort]]. No wonder the last chapter is called "The Flaw in the Plan".
* Kelsier and his crew of ''{{Mistborn}}'' pulled off a terrific BatmanGambit. First, they tricked the noble houses of the main city of Luthadel into fighting each other so that they wouldn't be able to mount a unified defense against rebel forces. Then, Kelsier visits people throughout the city, establishing emotional connections to them, and building his image of a larger than life [[TheHero hero]]. To reinforce his legend, he mixes in tales of a legendary magical material, which he purports will allow to him to slay the [[BigBad Lord Ruler]]. To ''further'' reinforce this, Kelsier uses his [[FunctionalMagic magic]] to empower a common soldier. In secret, Kelsier gathers arms and armor for those in the city. Finally, when the army is distracted with the rebel army, thus drawing them away from the city, Kelsier produces a public spectacle in the city square and is promptly killed. But, you see, [[MyDeathIsJustTheBeginning his death was part of the plan]]. Spurred by the death of their favored hero, the commoners of Luthadel rise up and depose the authorities, thus allowing the main heroine the opportunity needed to take out the BigBad. Which she does.
** And that's just the first book in the trilogy. The second two continue on in this tradition.
* BramStoker's original novel ''Literature/{{Dracula}}'', where the Count's master plan to infiltrate England and spread his vampire curse was only foiled by the DeusExMachina of asylum doctor John Seward [[ContrivedCoincidence just happening to be the former student of]] [[TheProfessor Professor Van Helsing]], the only person who'd recognise a vampire attack and know exactly what to do. Dracula's meticulous setup and coverup of his lairs and his later manipulation of Mina as a weapon against his pursuers was only matched by Van Helsing's counter-Xanatos of hypnotising her to deduce the Count's location.
* JRRTolkien's ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'': as explained on the {{What an Idiot}} page, Gandalf used one of these to distract Sauron from the true location of the One Ring, convincing him that Aragorn had the Ring and was planning to use it against him. Of course, the whole thing was a diversion to allow the hobbits to enter Mordor unnoticed.
** This becomes the basis of the free people's entire strategy after [[ThereAreNoCoincidences Pippin looks into the palantir]], premised entirely on the assumption that [[EvilCannotComprehendGood Sauron would assume]] that his enemies would try to use the ring against him rather than try to destroy it.
** Sauron has one that fails big time in ''TheSilmarillion''. In it, the Numenoreans (think Atlanteans) march on Sauron with such a massive force that Sauron's minions flee and he's captured. Of course, being the master manipulator that Sauron is, he goes from prisoner to advisor to the king in only a few years. As the king is near death's door, Sauron manipulates him into making war on Valinor, the land of the Valar (minor gods, essentially). The plan was simple, trick the Numenoreans into attacking Valinor so Sauron could watch them die spectacularly. He didn't anticipate that the Valar would lay down their power before Iluvatar (God), and ask him for aid. Iluvatar made the world round, made Valinor inaccessible except to certain individuals (namely the elves), and sunk Numenor into the sea. Sauron didn't even see it coming, and was swallowed under the ocean. When he emerged, he could no longer take a pleasing form again.
*** {{YMMV}} on whether it failed -- it certainly backfired due to Sauron underestimating the opposition, but later in the mythos he seems to consider his fair form a worthy trade for the destruction of his only real competition for world domination.
*** As a rule, Sauron is actually quite good at the BatmanGambit himself, using his foe's psychological weaknesses against them quite a bit during the second and third ages: using the elves' desire to keep and preserve middle earth to goad them into forging the rings and giving him valuable pointers on ring forging while they were at it, using the lust for power of the kings of Middle Earth to get them to accept his rings of power and become the Nazgul (he was less successful with the elves and dwarves), using the Numenorian's fears of death and resentment of elven and Valar immortality to goad the Numenorians into a suicidal assault on Valinor, using Saruman and Denethor's desire to scry his plans via the palantir to push both past the DespairEventHorizon, driving Saruman into a FaceHeelTurn. He doesn't always get it right, but Sauron's frighteningly good at playing his enemies like violins. It's only when he's [[{{OutGambitted}} beaten at his own game]] by Gandalf and Aragorn that he's finally defeated.
* Nobody does it like {{Literature/Jeeves|AndWooster}}. He plays a blinder at the end of ''Right Ho, Jeeves'', persuading Bertie to creep out at night and ring the fire bell, so that in the ensuing panic Tuppy Glossop's first instinct will be to rescue Angela Travers, and Gussie Fink-Nottle's to rescue Madeleine Basset, thereby rekindling their love. Jeeves's real plan is darker: he knows that the party will be unable to get back into the house, that the smouldering Aunt Dahlia will order Bertie to bicycle nine miles to fetch the key, that it will be their mutual exasperation with Bertie that will reunite the lovers ... and, finally, that this will be the ideal time for him to 'accidentally' burn Bertie's unsuitable mess jacket while ironing it. Head and shoulders, he stands above the rest.
* In TimothyZahn's ''StarWarsExpandedUniverse'' books, this is the essence of most of [[TheThrawnTrilogy Grand Admiral Thrawn's]] strategies - he's very, very good at predicting his enemies. He can work out what species is leading an attack from the way they fly, and target his counterattack against their cultural or genetic blind spots. He sets up a power struggle within the New Republic just by understanding Bothan psychology. And he is able to understand the psychology of any species simply by studying their art. For all intents and purposes, he's basically [[RecycledinSpace Sherlock Holmes, military commander In Space!]] He's also the only villain in the Expanded Universe to anticipate the heroes' CrazyEnoughToWork tendencies - when the New Republic is given the choice between attacking a moderately defended Imperial planet and one of the Empire's biggest military bases, and gives every indication that they intend to attack the former, he predicts they'll attack the latter because they're used to doing crazy things the enemy won't expect. He's right. Everyone on the New Republic side is shocked.
** ''OutboundFlight''. Ready? * deep breath* Commander Thrawn of the Chiss Expansion Defense Fleet has three Corellians in custody, and he's learned about the Republic and how to speak Basic from them. He's got his eye on the nomadic Vagaari, a slave-taking people that's coming close to threatening his own people, and steals a gravity generator from them. His own people, the Chiss, are getting increasingly disapproving of him and his tactics. A Trade Federation taskforce shows up, he curb-stomps it and captures the remains, including many droids, and is convinced by the Trade Federation captain to stop Outbound Flight, a potential threat to his people. Even if Outbound Flight goes on, they may run into something vastly worse, letting the far-outsiders learn too much about the peoples closer to the center of the galaxy. What does he do?
** He causes one of the Corellians to fear that they are hostages. The Corellian steals a shuttle, unwittingly taking some Trade Federation battle droids, and flees into Vagaari hands. The Vagaari are pleased with the droids, lock the Corellian into HumanShield position with the other captives on the outsides of their ships, and head directly towards the Chiss base. They are brought out of hyperspace by the stolen gravity generator, which is already being used to pin down Outbound Flight. The Jedi on Outbound Flight get immediately threatened by the Vagaari, so they do a mind-whammy on them, carefully not touching the captives. The droids inside of the ship shoot the Vagaari high command, knocking out the Jedi who are in mental contact with them, while the droid starfighters buzz the ships, firing between the captives.
* Another TimothyZahn example comes from ''TheIcarusHunt''. Pilot Jordan [=McKell=] pulls off a pair to [[spoiler: out a murderer]] and [[spoiler: pull off a spectacular UndercoverCopReveal.]]
* This is done in the later ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' novels where Honor and her detachment are sent to do rear-area strikes to force Haven to redeploy their attack fleet to defend against her numerically inferior technologically advanced threat. They succeed, but unfortunately for Honor succeed so well they manage to trap her entire fleet.
* This is basically how Gabriel Lafayette and [[spoiler:Easy Mather]]'s scheme works in ''Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks'', and, according to the book, how psychics in general work, albeit on a far less grandiose scale.
* Depending on how you interpret it (and there are more than a few ways to do so), the plot of Milton's ''ParadiseLost'' could be one of these, designed to give humankind the knowledge of good and evil, knowing that Satan would try to mess thing up by doing the opposite of whatever [[MagnificentBastard he thought God intended]].
* In Juliet Marillier's ''[[TheSevenwatersTrilogy Heir to Sevenwaters]]'', the plot is structured around a quest to retrieve a missing baby which turns out to be [[spoiler:engineered by the villain to lure his son into a trap, since he knew that the kidnapping would make the baby's older sister go after him, and that the son would accompany his love interest]].
* Henry organizes one of these in ''TheSecretHistory'', in his plans for Bunny's murder and, later, the main characters' staying out of jail. This involves relying on his knowledge of his friends' habits and weaknesses to get them to do exactly what he wants them to do. He also uses this to lay the blame on other people, like Cloke Rayburn--but Richard is horrified when he finds out that [[spoiler: Henry came very close to giving his name to the FBI.]]
* For ArseneLupin, the ''Hollow Needle'' mystery was pretty much all a Batman Gambit at the expense of the young amateur detective Isidore Beautrelet. Numerous others happen throughout Lupin's adventures but this is pretty much the biggest one.
* The Moth-kinden of ''{{Shadows of the Apt}}'', being an entire race of [[ManipulativeBastard Manipulative Bastards]], pull a rather nice one of these. The inhabitants of Tharn know TheEmpire's going to annex them at some point; not being a warlike people, they gamble everything on getting one particular man installed as Governor, as just about the only Wasp who's [[spoiler:Inapt -- like all Moths. Their agents have already got to him and cut a deal: if the Moths teach him magic]], he'll let them get on with their lives as if the Empire had never even noticed them.
* ''{{VideoGame/Halo}}: Ghosts of Onyx'' has some insurgents deliberately letting ONI learn of their nuclear weapons stockpile so that they can set a trap. It almost works too, if not for [[spoiler: the insurgents not knowing about Kurt's near-prescience.]]
* Basically everything {{Belisarius|Series}} does is either an IndyPloy or a brilliant BatmanGambit. One of his more notable? A half-year long military campaign [[spoiler: which he planned to ''lose'', so that the advancing enemy army would continue pursuing part of his army past where another part of his army was concealed, allowing them to slip away with a unit of [[HeelFaceTurn formed enemy troops]] the Malwa had assumed was annihilated the previous year, showing up in a completely different part of Persia disguised as ordinary prisoners of the "enemy unit", pull of a TrojanHorse attack that in one blow destroys logistical base of the Malwa in Persia while he sails off in a fleet of ships his wife had organized, resulting in the greatest military defeat in world history up to that point to a Malwa army 10 times the size of his...and ''not'' the one he was originally fighting. Because he wanted ''that'' Malwa army, its commander, and their "defeating" Belisarius" in battle to be considered the only good part of the whole situation by the Malwa]].
* Lucretia from {{Literature/Bystander}} admits that most of her problems in the main storyline are a result of her novice attempts at this.
** To clarify, her actual gambits mostly work, but she didn't do much as far as planning for a way to stop a reprisal.
* The short story "The Man At the Table" by C.B. Gilford features an unusual example of this trope. Byron Duquay is sitting at a card table, preparing for guests, when an escaped killer, Rick Masden, enters his home. Duquay convinces Masden to sit at the opposite end of the table for a drink. Masden demands money and the keys to Duquay's car. Duquay says he will give Masden neither, and then proceeds to tell him that if Masden attempts to get up with his knife, Duquay will upend the table on him and grab his own, larger knife. Masden is clearly less muscular than Duquay, and at a disadvantage in a physical fight. Masden quickly realizes that Duquay was expecting company, and that Duquay is trying to delay him until help can arrive, which Duquay admits calmly. They reach an arrangement where Masden will leave his knife behind and leave empty-handed. It is just then that the other guests arrive, and Masden is apprehended. [[spoiler: In a CrowningMomentOfAwesome we learn that delaying Masden wasn't Duquay's real gambit. Bluffing him into thinking that he could and would fight Masden was. Duquay was paralyzed from the waist down, unable to stand. His wife had placed him in the chair earlier so he would feel like less of an invalid when playing cards with his friends.]]
* It's looked for a while like in ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'' Harry's mother set one into motion before her death that would lead her [[spoiler: sons to find each other]], Harry to get useful information from her when it would most benefit him, and [[spoiler: the downfall of the vampire who killed her]]. It could also be said that Gentleman Johnny Marcone Batman Gambits off Harry's predictable hero tendencies.
* In the ''Literature/GauntsGhosts'' novel ''His Last Command [[spoiler: Gaunt wanted the inquisitors and senior commissars to learn about the Chaos portals, so he deliberately acted in a suspicious manner that Ludd would report.]]
* Saint Dane in the Pendragon series is a master Batman Gambiter; most of his plans are Batman gambits. In fact, he once pulls off a [[spoiler:'''double''' gambit: the characters '''realize that he's pulling one of these off, but that itself was what he wanted!''']]
* In the StarTrekTyphonPact novel ''Rough Beasts of Empire'', the [[spoiler: Tzenkethi]] manipulate Romulan politics so as to become an unofficial leading power in the Typhon Pact. The Romulans are the most powerful faction, but are currently led by somewhat hawkish leaders; this threatens the galactic stability seemingly desired by the [[spoiler: Tzenkethi]]. In order to "reign in" the Romulans without drawing attention to themselves or damaging the Romulans' actual strength (which serves the Pact well), they conspire to remove the current Romulan leader and install a Praetor they'd prefer be in power - all through subtle manipulation (and a few assassinations disguised as natural causes). This gambit is played out as Praetor Tal'aura works on her own; to reclaim the breakaway worlds of Donatra's Imperial Romulan State by [[spoiler: framing Donatra for a supposed attack on Ambassador Spock, then arresting her when she accepts an invite to a diplomatic conference on Romulus]]. The latter gambit is playing into the former, as a reunited Romulan state benefits the Typhon Pact and thus is in the best interests of the [[spoiler: Tzenkethi]].
* A fully-justified humdinger of one is pulled off in James P. Hogan's ''The Multiplex Man''. InAWorld TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture where East and West have exchanged ideologies, a terminally-ill scientist researching NeuralImplanting is trying to escape "The Green Curtain" and defect to the free East. But after a close-call with a SuperSoldier the corrupt American government created with his research, [[spoiler:he realizes he won't survive the night. So, he imprints ''himself'' in the super soldier's NeuroVault minutes before he dies. Once in the super soldier, he incinerates his corpse and send an encrypted communication to his allies detailing how create a LinkedListClueMethodology which will lead the super-soldier to a place where he can be retrieved from the soldier's NeuroVault. It works out perfectly because the super soldier is nothing more than a program, and thus the scientist is able to tailor the clues to be irresistible to it.]]
* In the ''{{Dragonlance}}'' novel "Dragons of Spring Dawning" Kitiara pulls one on Laurana, when she [[FlawExploitation uses Laurana's love for Tanis Half-Elven]] to manipulate the elfmaid into [[spoiler: [[LuredIntoATrap getting herself captured.]]]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Live Action TV]]
* In the ''{{Series/Firefly}}'' episode "Objects in Space," River pulls one of these on [[PsychoForHire Jubal Early]], using both his insecurities and the rest of the crew to maneuver him into position to be ambushed by Mal. The only thing she didn't factor in was [[SpannerInTheWorks her brother's]] rather suicidal devotion to her.
-->'''Mal:''' C'mon, you can yell at your brother for ruining your perfect plan.
-->'''River:''' ''(sigh)'' He takes ''so'' much looking after.
* A standard of many spy stories. There was a top quote from an episode of ''BurnNotice'' that featured Michael Westen on the unfortunate receiving end of a gambit by a rival spy. This required him to formulate his own gambit to counter how effective the first gambit was. As for Michael himself, despite not having personally killed anyone since the first episode, he's indirectly responsible for 90% of the deaths on the show. Another quote from the show:
-->'''Michael:''' ''(voice-over)'' In the spy game you spend a lot of time getting people to betray their own. Most do it for money, some do it for spite. But the greatest achievement is to get a guy to turn on his own people because he thinks he's being loyal.
* About 90% of ''Series/MissionImpossible'' episodes center around a BatmanGambit on the part of the IMF. The remaining 10%, and [[TheMovie the first movie]], center around what happens when such a gambit goes horribly wrong.
** But, when things are just about to go wrong for the gambit (which is usually once an episode right before a commercial break, just to keep viewers glued to their seats), XanatosSpeedChess ensues or a DeusExMachina will come around and distract the mark and draw them away from discovering TheMasquerade. And they also had one episode that used a XanatosGambit instead of the usual BatmanGambit.
* In ''Series/DoctorWho'', the Seventh Doctor is a master {{Chessmaster}} setting up all the pieces and having his enemies and friends effortlessly go where he wants them to go in order to save the day... at first glance. However, many of the TV stories involving this aspect of his character end up revolving around the sudden realisation that something is happening that he didn't actually plan for (such as two factions of Daleks seeking out the Hand of Omega rather than one), or someone does something that he didn't expect, necessitating a frantic run-around as he desperately tries to improvise some stop-gap solution to get things back on track.
-->'''Doctor:''' Ace, do you have any of that nitro-9 I told you not to bring with you?\\
'''Ace:''' Yes.\\
'''Doctor:''' Good girl.
** Also in ''Series/DoctorWho'', the Tenth Doctor is taken to task by Davros for doing precisely this. Davros points out to the Doctor that he makes a big point of how pacifistic he is, while at the same time manipulatively turning those around him into the kind of people who will blow up their own planet to stop an invasion.
** The Tenth Doctor is pretty fond of this -- [[ObfuscatingStupidity feigning ignorance]] and getting himself captured so he can be brought face to face with the bad guy of the week. Ninth plays around with it too -- "I'm really glad that worked. Those would have been terrible last words."
** Twice in series 5, [[spoiler: the freakin' ''Daleks'']] pull one on [[spoiler: the Doctor]].
*** First, in [[spoiler:"Victory of the Daleks", they let him declare himself as the Doctor and identified his enemies. This was exactly what the Daleks wanted, as their Progenator wouldn't recognize their spoiled DNA. They needed their oldest and most powerful enemy to tell the Progenator who they were, setting off the creation of a new bigger, badder, and [[ColorCodedforYourConvenience technicolor]] Dalek race. NiceJobBreakingItHero...]]
*** Then, in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E12ThePandoricaOpens The Pandorica Opens]]": [[spoiler:the alliance of the Doctor's enemies sets up the message that "the Pandorica is opening", so that the Doctor will arrive to find and stop the SealedEvilInACan inside. Of course there's actually nothing inside, they just wanted the Doctor to show up so they could [[SealedGoodInACan seal him]].]]
** In series 6, the Doctor defeats the Silence by [[spoiler:scattering his allies, building a prison and cloaking the TARDIS, all to get a Silent to say ''one phrase'']].
* The Argentinian series ''LosSimuladores'' is entirely about pulling Batman Gambits on unsuspecting people to make them change somehow or right a wrong. One episode, for example, features a faked bank robbery meant to delay the purchase of a bank, while another involves staging a date with a PaulMcCartney impostor in order to bring up her self-esteem and make her more socially active.
* ''PrisonBreak.'' The initial prison break from Fox River was ''one big'' BatmanGambit. Note how Michael included the reactions of criminals he doesn't even know in his plans. It is also interesting that Michael learns that it ''isn't'' as easy as he thought, leading to some use of XanatosSpeedChess. However, he also requires dumb luck (if it weren't for circumstances changing for characters included in his BatmanGambit, such as Sucre and Westmoreland, they would never have played along).
** It's actually {{lampshade|Hanging}}d by Lincoln, who tells Michael that he may have the blueprints of Fox River and a plan to break out, but that he can't rely on or predict criminals.
** In the ''PrisonBreak'' episode "Hell or High Water", Scofield tells the other would-be escapees that once he cuts the power, there's only 30 seconds to get across the no-man's-land surrounding Sona and through the electrified fence before the backup generator kicks in. The three looking out only for themselves insist on going first and are caught out in the open when the lights come back on 10 seconds later. Their recapture then serves as a diversion while he and the rest escape.
** [[spoiler: Christina Rose]] shows in ''S.O.B'' that the BatmanGambit is hereditary, manipulating an alleged buyer for Schylla into instead becoming an unknowing sacrificial lamb that catalyzes the change necessary to maximize Scylla's true worth, while getting Lincoln Burrows and his posse to ignorantly take the fall for said lamb's slaughter.
* In ''StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', the Founders pull off a pretty cool one that may actually be the result of a {{retcon}}. Season four ends with Odo being taken inside the Founders' "Great Link" to be judged for killing one of his own, during which he can sense that they're trying to keep certain faces and names secret from him in the telepathic orgy. He figures that these are people who the shape-shifting Founders have killed and are impersonating, and later realizes that one of them was Gowron, the leader of the Klingons. The season five premiere features a mission to expose this Founder, and the only way to do it is to kill him. Luckily, Odo realizes at the last moment that the real Founder is the Klingon general Martok, who would be perfectly positioned to take over the empire after Gowron was killed, with the Federation thinking he was dead.
** And, even better, in Season 7 this turns out to be a ''two-way'' BatmanGambit, because it is revealed that Section 31 had infected Odo with a Founder-killing virus and used his "trial" as a way of infecting the whole Great Link with it.
*** They shouldn't have been surprised. After all, the Founders fairly effortlessly managed to manipulate the secret police of both Romulans AND Cardassians into the mother of all massacres -- when of course, they thought that THEY would be exterminating the Founders... and again, this was all thanks to Odo.
** The season 5 episode "For The Uniform" features one of these: After Eddington, a traitorous former Starfleet officer poisoning colonies, gives Sisko a copy of Les Miserables, Sisko realizes that Eddington is living out the role of Jean Valjean. Sisko uses this knowledge to convince Eddington to give himself up, as part of his Hero Fantasy.
** Better than all of the above: [[MemeticMutation IT'S A FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE!]] Almost a GambitRoulette -- the plan relies on the FAAAAAAAAAKE being discovered in order for it to work -- and Sisko could have ended it all if it weren't so damn awesome. Brilliant BatmanGambit in that it's fueled by [[CrazyPrepared crazy preparedness]], like predicting how one character will react... and then predicting another character's reaction to the reaction.
*** However, the plan didn't require that the fake be discovered. The Romulan could have left for home believing the recording to be genuine, Garak still would have assassinated him by planting a bomb, and the Romulan government would respond accordingly.
** Quark pulled one in the Season 3 episode "The House of Quark." Quark finds himself in charge of a Klingon house, and the only way to save it from being conquered is to face his rival in a duel to the death. Rather than try to fight someone he has no hope of beating, he shows up for the duel, but [[ISurrenderSuckers immediately surrenders.]] He then goads his opponent into trying to kill him, all while reminding the crowd they all knew the outcome before they even walked into the room. His opponent is more than happy to oblige -- until Gowron stops him and strips him of his honor for trying to kill someone as pathetic and low as Quark. Just as planned.
* Captain Kirk lived for this trope. The aptly titled episode "The Carbomite Maneuver" features Kirk bluffing a powerful alien force. He later reuses this particular ploy in "The Deadly Years". His entire battle with the Romulan commander in "The Balance of Terror" features him and the Romulan commander pulling these on each other in rapid succession. Kirk and the Romulan are able to predict each other's behavior as being "just what they would have done." And in "A Taste of Armegeddon", Kirk is able to stop a centuries-old "clinical war" by destroying the war computers, abrogating the treaty between the two worlds. The two planets were now faced with the prospect of the horrors of real war, or actually working for peace.
-->'''Kirk:''' Death, destruction, disease, horror... that's what war is all about, Anan. That's what makes it a thing to be avoided. But you've made it neat and painless -- so neat and painless, you've had no reason to stop it, and you've had it for five hundred years. Since it seems to be the only way I can save my crew, my ship... I'm going to end it for you -- one way or another.
** And when Spock points out the possibility that the gambit may have failed:
--->'''Spock:''' Captain, you took a big chance.\\
'''Kirk:''' Did I, Mr. Spock? They had been killing three million people a year. It had been going on for five-hundred years. An actual attack wouldn't have killed any more people than one of their computer attacks, but it would have ended their ability to make war. The fighting would have been over. Permanently.\\
'''[=McCoy:=]''' But you didn't know that it would work.\\
'''Kirk:''' No. It was a calculated risk. Still, the Emenians keep a very orderly society, and actual war is a very messy business. A very, very messy business. I had a feeling they would do anything to avoid it, even talk peace.
** No one brings up the possibility that they will simply rebuild and continue their neater war.
** Spock's fiancée T'Pring pulls one on him in "Amok Time". Rather than choose her actual boyfriend as her champion in a duel to the death to dissolve the engagement, she chooses Kirk, reasoning (correctly) that whoever wins will be too upset about killing his best friend to go through with the wedding. [[spoiler: Even when [=McCoy=] [[TakeAThirdOption Takes A Third Option]] and both Kirk and Spock survive, she still gets her way.]]
* Marya does this casually in ''HogansHeroes''. She purposefully makes things hard for Hogan, including having him taken hostage in a rocket factory they both know has a bomb planted inside it and throwing doubts on her loyalty, because she's sure Hogan will figure something out that will also kill her Nazi contact as collateral damage.
* Most of the cons used in ''{{Hustle}}'' rely upon this.
** Mickey can sometimes get a bit Batman-y. The crowning example is probably when, in a competition with Danny, he bases a scam not just on assuming [[spoiler: Danny will try and steal his mark]], but also ''how he'll try to do it''.
* Ditto ''{{Series/Leverage}}''.
** The Season 1 finale of ''Leverage'', "The Second David Job", specifically draws attention to this:
--->'''[[spoiler:Jim Sterling]]:''' Your entire plan counted on me being an arrogant, utter bastard.\\
'''Nathan Ford:''' Yeah, that's a stretch.
** One episode revolves around the team working with Nate's ex-wife, Maggie. She points out a flaw in his plan: you can't just ''make'' people do what you want them to. The team reacts with surprise, horror, and amusement to this revelation.
* Spike of ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' uses this to good effect in the episode "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS4E20TheYokoFactor The Yoko Factor]]". Knowing the personalities and temperament of each character, he casually plants information with each of them to turn them on each other. He does it in a way that's particularly ingenious: he relies on their own expectations of ''him'' to lead the characters into "discovering" the false rumors for themselves... so that each of them thinks it was their own idea.
** YMMV on whether it counts as "ingenious" - the fight lasted less than an episode, and directly led them to the idea which helped them destroy the season's BigBad. If it was a BatmanGambit, it wasn't a very good one.
*** The fight only ended so quickly because [[GoneHorriblyRight Spike realised that if they weren't talking, Willow wouldn't decode the]] MacGuffin [[GoneHorriblyRight for the team]] and so he had to remind her to do it, which led to the gang talking, which led to them figuring out that Spike had been manipulating them the whole time. [[ForWantOfANail If Spike and Adam had given it a little more thought, it would have worked perfectly.]]
** Giles pulls one on Buffy in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E3FaithHopeAndTrick Faith, Hope & Trick]]" to get her to reveal what happened when she killed Angel back in "Becoming Part 2". By asking her under the pretext of needing information to create a binding spell to prevent Acathla from being re-awakened, Giles not only guesses correctly Buffy's training will eventually mean she will reveal what happen, it also means she won't question his motives in asking. Doubles as somewhat of a TearJerker and a CrowningMomentOfAwesome for Giles.
* Todd Gack from ''{{Series/Seinfeld}}'' has figured out a "dating loophole" where he makes a bet with a woman about something he knows isn't true, offering to treat her to dinner if he loses. This allows him to essentially go on as many dates as he wants without ever having to actually ask any women out.
** Attempted by Jerry and George to switch Jerry's girlfriend with her roommate by offending her by suggesting a mengé á trios. It all blows up in their faces when it turns out [[spoiler: the girlfriend and roommate were both "into it."]]
* Friar Tuck pulls one of these in the first episode of the third series of the BBC's ''Series/RobinHood'': Robin has become disillusioned, so Tuck gets the rest of the gang captured. Naturally, Robin goes to save them, which also rekindles the myth - the population think he's dead, so naturally, appearing just after an eclipse is quite a spectacle...
* Awesomely implemented in ''SamuraiSentaiShinkenger''; the title team tricks one of the {{Big Bad}}s into kidnapping one of them instead of the baddie's original target in order to find out where she's holding the rest of her captives. Unfortunately, the BigBad ''knew'' they were going to do this, and had her minions kidnap the real target, anyway, using the Shinkenger in her custody to lure the others into a trap. However, the Shinkengers anticipated ''that'', and replaced the real target with ''another'' of their members, using ''him'' to find out the location of the BigBad and using shadow puppets to make it look like they had fallen for her trap.
* Gregory {{Series/House}} pulls off a small scale Batman Gambit: when his game in the 4th season ended, he wanted to hire Kutner, Taub and Thirteen. But since Cuddy already hired Foreman, he could only hire two. Solution: hire the two male ones to let the slightly feminist director let him hire Thirteen.
** Cuddy originally says it's about how he needs a woman on the team, but admits later it's because Thirteen gives a rat's ass about other human beings, whereas Foreman and Taub are just ambitious and House and Kutner are mostly in it for the puzzle. Not really feminism, more like House knows Cuddy sorta likes Thirteen.
* ''{{Dollhouse}}.'' Specifically, [[spoiler: the ''entire first season'' was one long BatmanGambit by Alpha to get inside the Dollhouse and recover Echo.]]
* In ''Series/ItsAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia'', the characters will occasionally form Batman Gambits with some degree of success. In the episode 'Mac Bangs Dennis' Mom', Charlie forms a Batman Gambit in response to finding out that Mac had slept with Dennis and Dee's mom. At first, in order to get out of menial work, Dennis threatens to sleep with the Waitress, who is the object of Charlie's desire. However, Charlie brings Dennis to witness Mac leaving Dennis' mom's house, but prevents Dennis from physically confronting Mac, suggesting the alternative of having Dennis sleep with Mac's mom. Charlie then enlists the help of Dee by promising to relieve her of the menial labor bestowed upon her the previous episode. Dee brings the Waitress to witness Dennis attempting (and failing) to seduce Mac's mom. Dee then suggests to the Waitress that she get back at Dennis by sleeping with Charlie. The Gambit inevitably fails, however, as the Waitress opts to sleep with Dennis' dad instead, much to Charlie's chagrin.
** Dennis pulls a successful one later, when he has a conflict with a local hippie trying to save a tree. Dennis offers to chain himself to the tree, which makes him look selfless and goads the hippie into chaining himself there instead. While he stands in the rain all night, Dennis bangs his girlfriend. Then he comes back the next day, unchains him, and makes him watch the tree being bulldozed.
* The titular character of ''{{Series/Nikita}}'' pulls one of these in practically each episode of season 1, before finding herself more frequently as the recipient in season 2.
* Barney Stinson's Scuba Diver play in The Playbook episode of ''Series/HowIMetYourMother''. The Scuba Diver, Barney tells a meddlesome female friend, in this case Lily, about the Playbook, a book of schemes he's invented to pick up women. He then uses a scheme from the playbook to hit on her coworker, making Lily angry enough to steal the Playbook and tell her friend all about the scams he pulled. Barney then puts on a scuba suit and tells Lily that he's going to pull one more scam called the Scuba Suit on a hot girl standing at the bar. This causes Lily to go and tell the girl about the Playbook and incensed they both come back to Barney and demand to know what the scheme is. Barney then makes up a spiel about his deep insecurities, causing Lily to feel bad for Barney and eventually convince the girl to go out with him.
** Barney plans another one in [[spoiler: "The Broath" alongside Quinn to freak his friends out and teach them not to meddle in his affairs.]]
* The ''{{Sanctuary}}'' episode [[spoiler: Veritas]] features a Batman Gambit by [[spoiler: the immortal doctor/scientist Helen Magnus]] which involved [[spoiler: self-induced madness and the apparent death of a friend at her own hand.]] It's not clear exactly who is/are the target(s) of this gambit until the very end--unless you caught a fleeting glimpse of the little smile on the face of the guilty party at a highly inappropriate moment.
* ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'' episode "The Creepy Candy Coating Corollary" has WilWheaton pull off one of these, to win a card game against Sheldon.
** Later Wil returns as a member of a rival bowling team. He talks Penny into dumping Leonard during a vital tournament. Leonard leaves in tears, Sheldon's team is disqualified and WilWheaton is cemented as the MagnificentBastard of the series.
---> '''Wil''': You don't really think I'd break up a couple just to win a bowling match, do you?
---> '''Sheldon''': No, I guess not.
---> '''Wil''': ''[grins]'' Good. Keep thinking that.
* Cal Lightman on ''Series/LieToMe'' uses this incredibly often, much to everyone's annoyance.
* Amanda Waller pulls of one in the ''{{Smallville}}'' episode "Extreme Justice". It looks like she's having the members of the long-retired JusticeSocietyOfAmerica killed as a continuation of the government frame that originally put them out of business. Reality is [[spoiler: she's provoking the surviving JSA members to come out of retirement to get back in the game, and meet and inspire the new generation of superheroes, because of something coming that will cause the planet to need all of its heroes]].
* Michael Garibaldi of ''Series/{{Babylon 5}}'' never starts a conversation before first figuring out where it'll lead. As an inversion, he also prepares a bonus for those who manage to positively surprise him.
** The implications of having such a mind is {{lampshade|Hanging}}d by [[TheScrappy Byron]] when he mocks Garibaldi by pointing out what a sad, lonely life he must lead. It might have been a CrowningMomentOfAwesome for the character, if the fandom had actually liked the character of Byron.
** Sheridan also performs one in ''Rumors, Bargains and Lies''. The League of Non-Aligned Worlds are rebuffing his attempts to set up a border patrol system, seeing ulterior motives where there aren't any. He provides them with plenty of ParanoiaFuel via Ivanova's [[spoiler:completely truthful]] SuspiciouslySpecificDenial. By the end of the episode, they're ''demanding'' to be protected by the White Star Fleet.
** Going back to season 3, Nightwatch seems on the verge of taking over the station. Zack informs the leader of a bunch of Narns coming in supposedly to replace them: the smoking gun they've needed to arrest Sheridan for sedition. So every able hand is summoned to the docking bay to capture the evidence. Only there is no evidence. [[spoiler:Sheridan had known they couldn't pass up such a prospect, and it helps to have a FakeDefector to lead most of Nightwatch into your well-laid PPG-proof trap.]]
* In ''{{Series/Lost}}'', [[spoiler:Desmond Hume]] in the [[MindScrew parallel-alternate-off-island reality]] ran one of these gambits to [[spoiler:get everyone to remember their lives on the island]].
* At the very least played with in ''DesperateHousewives'', when [[spoiler: Angie is forced to make a bomb for her terrorist ex-lover. When he tells her he planted the bomb in the house to kill the son she took from him, she runs, seemingly to try and save his life. In reality, she was just getting a safe distance, because unbeknownst to the ex-lover, the bomb was in the remote he was holding.]]
* In ''{{Frasier}}'' episode ''The Apparent Trap'', his and Lilith's son pulls one on them, by setting them up [[spoiler:so that they would feel so bad about dashing his hopes they'd buy him his minibike.]] Lilith figures him out, though.
* ''RumpoleOfTheBailey'': Rumpole becomes a minor master of these, pulling them off with some regularity as time went on. His most fascinating and [[Awesome/RumpoleOfTheBailey awesome]] one involved him settling [[TwoLinesNoWaiting both major plotlines]] in one move, [[spoiler:[[FakingTheDead faking his death]] to both collect from a [[AmoralAttorney shady]] and notoriously hard-to-find solicitor known to try and bargain down his back payments to barristers with grieving widows (thus solving some money trouble that had gotten him in serious trouble with She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed[[hottip:* :i.e. his wife Hilda]]). This allowed him to then serve a subpoena to the solicitor; the solicitor's testimony won him the case he was arguing.]]
* In the eleventh episode of ''Series/SpartacusBloodAndSand'', Batiatus sets in motion his own revenge-driven BatmanGambit by [[spoiler:kidnapping Magistrate Calavius, and instructing Ashur only to kill him at the appropriate time. Batiatus times this with Pompey's primus so that he can get close to Calavius' son, Numerius, and have an alibi.]] Meanwhile, Ashur has been gaining the trust (read: money) of Solonius by warning him of attempts Batiatus has made on his life. Ashur is too frightened of the repercussions of this plan to talk about it however. Eventually, Ashur wants out and wants to spiel on Batiatus's plan in exchange for enough cash to get out of town. [[spoiler:When Ashur leads him to the magistrate, he already has had his throat cut. Batiatus then conveniently bursts in with his guards and with the magistrates son and Asher goes to his side. Solonius is then caught over the dead Magistrate holding a dagger and seized at Batiatus' order.]]
* [[TheRockfordFiles Jim Rockford]] is a master of these, whether as part of a con, or to catch a criminal. Two of his best appear in the episodes "There's one in Every Port" and "Joey Blue-Eyes." They are far too beautiful to describe.
* Patrick Jane in ''TheMentalist'' constantly pulls these off. Most episodes involve him "fishing"--setting up a trap, and then just waiting to see if it works. As Jane himself pointed out, "if not, we get a relaxing day out of it."
* These fly left, right and center on ''Series/{{Alias}}'', but the characters most prone to them are villains [[MagnificentBastard Irina]], [[AffablyEvil Sloane]], and [[ManOfWealthAndTaste Sark]]. In contrast, [[GuileHero Jack]] prefers {{Xanatos Gambit}}s mixed with his [[TheChessmaster chessmaster]] skills.
* ''Series/{{Columbo}}'' is a master of this, often using it to get the villain of the week to incriminate themself.
** For example, one suspect was a stage magician with a guillotine trick. Columbo secretly switched the gimmick to its lethal state before submitting to a demonstration, expecting that the suspect would switch it again in an attempt to kill him. If the suspect were innocent, Columbo would die; rotten luck for the suspect. Luckily Columbo never errs, and the suspect unwittingly switched the gimmick back to safe, saving Columbo from suicide.
* ''TheAndyGriffithShow'' was built around this trope. Usually involving Andy using the BMG to get people to solve their own problems/benefit themselves.
* Abed from ''{{Series/Community}}'', thanks to his GenreSavvy-ness and prophetic ability to predict the action of those around him will occasionally pull this off. A prime example he was able to manipulate both Jeff's TeamDad and Britta's Team Mom instincts in order to finish a student film.
* Goren does these almost OncePerEpisode on ''LawAndOrderCriminalIntent''. He's usually compared to SherlockHolmes by the series' creators, but he's really a lot more like Series/{{Columbo}}.
* Walt does this throughout ''BreakingBad'' and he continually gets better at stringing together assassination plans and manipulating those around him as the show progresses. Eventually, he pulls off a huge gambit in the season 4 finale where he manipulates an elaborate set of events and people in order to[[spoiler: arrange for the ''BigBad'' of the season, Gus, to be blown up in a retirement home.]].
* Happens quite frequently on ''Series/CornerGas'', occasionally resulting in a GambitPileup, although they are probably for the most mundane things on this list, like not owing someone a favor, and most of the humor comes from how well (or not) the characters are able to pull off the gambit, but that shouldn't be surprising given the sitcom's premise.
* PlayedForLaughs on ''Series/ThirtyRock'': Jack cracks a joke about Liz, who then hands him an envelope with the exact words of his joke written inside. Taken UpToEleven when Jack responds by handing her an envelope that says "You will hand me an envelope with my joke written on it"
* Mr. Gold's plan to help Emma win a municipal election in ''Series/OnceUponATime''. While Emma is in the Mayor's office arguing with Regina, he sets fire to City Hall, giving Emma a chance to rescue Regina and be shown to be a hero. When Emma finds out about this, she is furious, but Gold points out that if she denounces him, she loses the election and disappoints everyone. [[spoiler: She does denounce him and wins anyway, which Gold then reveals was AllAccordingToPlan. Saving the rather unpopular Regina wouldn't have been enough to win Emma the election. Showing everyone that she was tough enough to stand up to Gold, the most feared man in town, however, was a different story.]]
* In ''Series/NewsRadio'', Jimmy James has proven himself able to use these upon his employees. Most of the other employees have managed to pull off one or two of their own as well.
* Richard Pryor's "Prison Play" skit involves the play's producer promising [[DeliberateValuesDissonance the warden that]] [[BlackDudeDiesFirst "The Nigger gets killed"]] as LaserGuidedKarma [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotHeinous for daring to fall in love with]] [[WhereDaWhiteWomenAt a White woman.]] However, it ends with the [[CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming father-in-law accepting the suitor and wanting to becoming a paragon of true love.]] [[EvillyAffable The]] [[VillainousBreakdown Warden isn't happy.]]
---> '''Warden''': Horseshit! Wait a minute! Just wait a goddamned minute! You said the nigger got killed! I wan' me a goddamn dead nigger up in here else I'll hang here one of these homosex-u-als!
* Used by "Boston" Rob Mariano on Season 7 of ''TheAmazingRace'', during the four pounds of meat Roadblock. After deciding that eating four pounds of meat was impossible, he quit the task and took the four-hour penalty. Since the penalty did not start until the next team showed up, he used that to his advantage, waiting for his own penalty to start before convincing two other teams to also quit the task, counting on their initial squeamishness at starting the task to cause them to follow his lead. Cue EvilGloating about how he could not get eliminated that leg.
** In Season 5, Chip & Kim built up Colin & Christie's egos and made them over-confident, trusting that any sort of struggle later would cause them to [[VillainousBreakdown self-destruct]]. Earlier in the Season their plan was to encourage the rivalry between Colin and Mirna in order to get them to focus more on each other than the race, however Charla & Mirna got eliminated too quickly for this to come to fruition.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Mythology and Religion]]
* OlderThanFeudalism examples from GreekMythology:
** This happened when Zeus decided to take revenge at humanity because Prometheus stole fire from him. He did this by first giving Prometheus' brother Epimetheus a woman named Pandora who was very curious. With her also came a [[SealedEvilInACan mysterious box]] in which Pandora was told never to open it. Naturally, Pandora's curiosity got the better of her and now humanity is ravaged with diseases and vices.
** ''Literature/TheOdyssey'' features how Odysseus manages to escape the cyclops Polyphemos. When he's first captured, he tells the cyclops that his name is "Nobody". Although his plan does work in the end, it rests on the assumptions that, ''if'' the Polyphemos's brothers hear Odysseus blind him and ask if there's anyone there, 1) that Polyphemos will say "It's Nobody," and 2) they'll buy it and go away.
* A couple of these are in ''Literature/TheBible''.
** The serpent/{{Satan}} pulls one by getting Adam and Eve to disobey {{God}} by questioning whether he has the right to tell them what to do, knowing that God won't kill them immediately or else look like he is afraid of someone not being under his authority, thus possibly causing the [[OurAngelsAreDifferent angels]] to question his authority. God retaliates by exploiting his VetinariJobSecurity and ceding Earth to Satan and the humans so they can [[HumansAreBastards screw themselves over trying to rule themselves]]. God then [[NotSoOmniscientAfterAll turns on his foresight]] and pulls a 4,000-year-long gambit ending in the death of [[MessianicArchetype Jesus Christ]] to {{rede|mptionEarnsLife}}em the rest of humanity who got pulled into this whole mess.
** King Solomon pulled this off when he determined which of two women was the true mother of a child they both claimed was theirs. He proposed that the child be cut in half so that both women would have part of him, rightfully believing that the false mother would allow the "division" and that the real mother would sooner have her son be raised by someone else than have him killed.[[hottip:*:The benefit here being that even if he didn't get the literal truth of the kid's birth, he still knew who ''deserved'' it because she actually cared rather than being in it for the one-upsmanship.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:New Media]]
* According to [[http://www.journalfen.net/users/charlottelennox/784.html this report]], a ''Harry Potter'' fan known as [=MsScribe=] pulled off an elaborate BatmanGambit involving an untold number of sockpuppets to garner sympathy, advance her popularity, and secure her place in what was then the fandom's inner circle.
* This can be an effective way of dealing with Internet trolls. Set up the right conditions and they'll possibly admit to trolling (in an attempt to grief you) or saying something incriminating that can get them modded (often happens when they brag) or used against them -- such as one review troll who after being accused of not buying the game, admitted he had bought the game to play it and piss everyone off. Said review troll's credibility was destroyed, and most of his reviews were removed.
* One way people manage to get more money from their items sold on {{Ebay}} is to get a friend's account to bid alongside genuine bidders; this gambit would assume that the genuine bidders wanted the item enough that they would bid higher when the "friend account" offers a higher price.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Pro Wrestling]]
* During BretHart's feud with VinceMcMahon, a woman accidentally backs her car into Hart's limo as he was getting in, severely injuring his left leg in the process. [=McMahon=] would then spend the following weeks verbally abusing Hart, until he finally managed to goad him into a No Holds Barred match for Wrestlemania XXVI. [[spoiler: During the contract signing, Hart then reveals that the limo accident and the subsequent leg injury were nothing more than an elaborate con to manipulate [=McMahon's=] ego and trap himself into a match with a supposed cripple]].
* Part of Carlito's gimmick is to bite into an apple and then spit it into a person's face. One time, he attempted this on TheBigShow, only for Show to steal the apple and NeckLift him. Show decides to [[BeatThemAtTheirOwnGame beat him at his own game]] and bites into the apple, only to collapse. Carlito explains that he saw this coming, and [[{{Kayfabe}} poisoned]] the apple. He then beats up the weakened Big Show. If Show didn't decide to use the apple, who knows how this situation would have turned out.
* {{Wrestler/Raven}} is a {{ma|gnificentBastard}}ster of this; he manipulates people's hopes, dreams, fears, and desires to the point of becoming a DarkMessiah to his followers.
* JerryLawler pulls off a masterful one on MichaelCole on the May 16th, 2011 edition of ''Raw''. Jerry, after accepting a match with Cole at ''Over The Limit'', tells Cole that he doesn't respect him...but ''does'' respect Cole's {{Dragon}} Jack Swagger for being a former world champion and great wrestler. He then says Cole's made Swagger nothing but his sidekick. Michael Cole responds by gloating about how being his sidekick has made Jack a much greater star and no one remembers that he used to be world champion...with Jack Swagger right in the ring. The result is a seriously ticked off Swagger telling Jerry DoWithHimAsYouWill and abandoning Cole. Jerry's reaction pretty much confirms this was a ploy to use Michael's own ego to isolate him from his own ally.
* The aforementioned Hitman used one to win the WWF Championship at SummerSlam 1997 from TheUndertaker. ShawnMichaels, the guest referee, confronted him about a chair he'd wedged into the corner earlier, which led to Hart spitting in his face. HBK swung the chair and accidentally hit Taker when Hart ducked, which in turn allowed Hart to make the cover for which Michaels had to count. This isn't necessarily the BatmanGambit worth mentioning here though. That would be the {{TNA}} rendition [[FleetingDemographicRule 14½ years later]]. At ''Against All Odds 2012'', TNA World Heavyweight Champion [[ItsAllAboutMe Bobby Roode]] had to defend his title in a four-way match against JeffHardy, [[{{Beergasm}} James Storm]], and [[TheBully Bully Ray]], with authority figure {{Wrestler/Sting}}, who Roode hasn't been very fond of [[StrawmanHasAPoint for good reason]], as the special enforcer. [[spoiler:After the match spiraled into chaos and the referee was knocked down, Roode brought in the world title to try to hit Hardy with it, only for Sting to cut him off and take the belt from him. Let's just say, masterful evil goading and gloating ensued.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Sports]]
* The Miami Dolphins pulled this one off against division rivals New York Jets in what is known as the "Fake Spike Game." With only 22 seconds remaining in the clock, the Dolphins were out of timeouts and were down 21-24. The Dolphins reached the Jets 8-yard line. Quarterback Dan Marino seems to indicate that he was going to spike the ball to stop the clock and try a field goal that will tie the game and push for an overtime. Anticipating a spike, the Jets defense lined up haphazardly. Instead, Marino didn't spike the ball and with the Jets caught off guard, Marino passed the ball to wide-receiver Ingram for a touchdown. Because of the "fake spike," the Dolphins ended up winning the game 28-24 in regulation rather than pushing for overtime.
** Most trick plays are a form of this. The play-action pass is a good example. Fake a hand-off to the runningback, expecting the defense to play as they should against the run: converge on the runningback. Meanwhile you, the quarterback, have all the time in the world to pass down the field. Like all true Batman Gambits, this can be ruined spectacularly. An all-out blitz can disrupt a play-action pass, as enough blitzers can get in the backfield to swallow BOTH the QB and RB, or the defenders see the hand-off as a fake and stick to their pass defending assignments.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
* In ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'': The Eldar, all the time. Because they specialise in reading the various futures that arise from each course of action, they know exactly how to manouevre their enemies into doing what they want. The Eldar call this [[CombatPragmatist pragmatism]]; everyone else calls them a bunch of [[TheChessmaster underhanded bastards]].
* The "Social Combat" rules in the TabletopGame/NewWorldOfDarkness allow someone to do this. Between Sway (persuading or manipulating others), Anticipation (predicting people or events) and Setup (organising people in order to set events in motion), it is possible to make such plans (or [[RetCon retroactively work them in after the fact]]).
* A good TabletopRPG GameMaster will do this to some extent to prevent things from going OffTheRails without the players feeling RailRoaded. Have the players decided to take the left hand path or a right hand path? Doesn't matter. The Bandits just happened to set up the ambush on whichever route the players choose.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Theater]]
* In the musical ''Theatre/SeventeenSeventySix'', Congress needs a unanimous vote to declare independence. Right when John Dickinson is about to tell the Congress that Pennsylvania votes nay, Benjamin Franklin gets his [[TheChessmaster Chessmaster]] on and asks that the three delegates be polled. Dickinson and Franklin cancel each other out by voting "nay" and "yea" respectively, leaving [[DecidedByOneVote everything up to Judge James Wilson]], who's spent the entire production mindlessly seconding everything Dickinson says. But the entire question of American independence ends up in his lap, when, as Franklin tells him, "every mapmaker in the world is waiting for your answer," he realizes he doesn't want to be known forever as the man who stopped American independence.
* The entire sequence of "The Deal (No Deal)" from ''Theatre/{{Chess}}''. Molokov wants the USSR to win the chess tournament. De Courcey wants American prisoners in the USSR to be released. They work together to get defected Soviet champion Anatoly to throw the match, by A) pressuring his abandoned wife Svetlana to pressure him lest they make life difficult for her and her children, as well as B) pressuring his new lover Florence to pressure him by offering her the chance to see her DisappearedDad again. They also bring in UnwittingPawn Freddie to try and persuade Anatoly to throw the match for Florence's sake, but after a crushing rejection from both of them (and a show-stopping musical number) he [[spoiler: turns on Molokov, De Courcey, and indeed ''everyone'', and tells Anatoly how and why to win.]]
** Results vary in each version of ''Chess'', though Anatoly ends up [[spoiler: going back to the Soviet Union]] in all of them. In the London version, he [[spoiler: wins the game]]; in others, he [[spoiler: loses]].
* In ''PhantomOfTheOpera'', Raoul and the others pressure a fearful Christine into performing the lead role in the opera that the Phantom has written. Knowing full well that the Phantom will attend if she performs, they plan to catch him then. While this might not be what the Phantom wants precisely, he has anticipated it, and as such, is able to disguise himself and abduct Christine.
* In ''Theatre/SherlockHolmes'', Holmes risks his life to negotiate the purchase of a MacGuffin from the villains, not letting Alice know he knows it's a fake in order to manipulate her into surrendering the real MacGuffin to the Count and Sir Edward, who congratulate Holmes for pulling off this ingenious scheme.
* In its original form, and shorn of its set pieces, ''The Nutcracker'' is a BatmanGambit by Herr Drosselmeyer, who sets up his goddaughter Clara to help him free his nephew, the Prince.
* ''TwelfthNight'' has two of these, both of which go entirely according to plan. First, Maria [[LoveLetterLunacy plants a fake love letter]] to Malvolio from Olivia, instructing him to do ridiculous things in order to win her heart; this only works because Maria knows Malvolio is vain and self-deluding enough to eat it up. Later, Sir Toby has a little fun by pitting two known cowards against each other in a fight and then informing each duelist of his respective opponent's berserker tendencies. [[spoiler:Incidentally, Sir Toby and Maria end up [[UnholyMatrimony eloping]] by the end of the play, which just goes to show you that this trope can be a highly effective form of romantic bonding]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]
* [[AbusivePrecursors The Reapers]] in the ''VideoGame/MassEffect'' series incorporate a galactic-scale Batman Gambit ''into their life-cycle''. They leave highly advanced technology around the galaxy [[spoiler:as well as the Citadel, the largest, most advanced space station in existence]] to ensure that races develop along technological and cultural paths they desire. [[spoiler:especially with regards to the Citadel, which invariably becomes the cultural center of any empire]] Then, possessing the technology to counter what they left behind, they quickly eliminate all life in the galaxy [[spoiler:and melt down several million members of any species they find to make more Reapers]]. One could say that the Reapers are the living embodiment of the BatmanGambit.
* Isaac pulls this on both Hector and Trevor in ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaCurseOfDarkness''. He lures Hector (to whom he serves as a worthy opponent) along with the promise of eventually facing him in battle, and at the same time draws Trevor's attention. When he slips into the Infinite Corridor, Trevor is forced to let Hector into it... which leads to Hector accidentally breaking the seal on Dracula's Castle, Isaac's goal the entire time.
** Of course, ultimately, we learn who the real wirepuller is. It's Dracula, of course; he'd be playing GambitRoulette if he didn't already have his hooks deep into Hector and Isaac's psyches and thus a much greater chance of success than the average Yagami. The entire game is triggered by Dracula's effort to resurrect himself, to wit -- raise the castle with Isaac's yanking of Hector and Trevor, have Isaac stab that damn Belmont, then possess Hector when Hector finally gets sick of this nonsense and kills Isaac, thus sealing the curse. Alas, he wasn't counting on Julia being the only one in the game with a clue.
*** Also, in ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaLamentOfInnocence'', Mathias Cronqvist used Leon Belmont to kill Walter Bernhard to absorb his soul. At the end, Mathias is implied to be the Dracula, Lord of the Vampires.
*** Implied? He slaps you in the face with the knowledge. The entire plot was designed so that he could become Dracula.
* In ''{{VideoGame/Thief}} 2'', the BigBad runs a Batman Gambit on the sheriff and the BigBad of ''Thief 3'' uses a Batman Gambit on the whole Keeper organization.
* In ''{{VideoGame/Overlord}}'', the game turns out to be a BatmanGambit designed to allow the previous Overlord to easily return to his place in case he was "defeated", by taking over the body of the Wizard who helped slay him, manipulating one of the heroes who defeated him into becoming his temporary successor, and corrupting the other heroes so the new Overlord would be forced to eliminate them.
* ''HideoKojima'' is absolutely crackers about these.
** ''Videogame/MetalGearSolid'' features a hastily improvised Gambit (developed by the bad guys' resident psychic, sensibly enough) which revolves around a single-use keycard which will toggle a nuclear weapon from "active" to "inactive" or vice-versa. The bad guys seem to accept that facing off against the hero is a suicidal masquerade to set up deathbed conversions and make the plan convincing.
** The sequel goes into a full-blown GambitRoulette to underscore the power of the GovernmentConspiracy. Or [[GainaxEnding sentient assemblage of constitutional amendments, or [=AIs=], or whatever the hell they are.]]
** The third game's tragic denouement reveals a Gambit (authored by an earlier iteration of the aforementioned conspiracy) which went right up to the pseudovillain's own demise at the hands of the hero.
** And the fourth is basically a GambitPileup, so let's not get started....
* All of the events within the PlayStation2 ''{{Shinobi}}'' turn out to be one big BatmanGambit orchestrated by the FinalBoss Hiruko: He manipulated Hotsuma into defeating Yatsurao so that the villain could absorb the countless number of souls that were subsequently released from the fallen giant. And he intended from the very beginning for Hotsuma to gather all of the souls of each foe he had sent to take him out, at which point he'd defeat Hotsuma and take all those souls for himself.
* In ''[[DotHack .hack//G.U.]]'' In what is possibly the longest to ever occur in gaming, Ovan uses a Batman Gambit that spans three games in order to make Haseo [[spoiler:become strong enough to destroy him.]]
** If you count the anime -- ''[[DotHack .hack//ROOTS]]'' -- then it takes even longer. And Ovan has to step in at one point to make corrections to Haseo's development.
* In ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIIINocturne'', the [[PlanetHeck Labyrinth of Amala]] subquest has you tasked with defeating the ten [[BonusBoss Fiends]] and returning the [[MacGuffin Candelabrum]] they had stolen to Amala. If you complete the Labyrinth of Amala (it is optional) then the whole thing is revealed to be a BatmanGambit orchestrated by none other than [[spoiler:Lucifer himself. The Fiends had never stolen the candelabrum; the entire thing was set up as a training exercise to create a new demon that would be strong enough to lead the armies of [[{{Hell}} Deep Amala]] in an [[RageAgainstTheHeavens war against God Himself]], as well as a test to see if you had the fortitude to fully embrace your demonic side and become Deep Amala's champion]].
* From another ''ShinMegamiTensei'' game ''VideoGame/{{Persona 4}}'' (which is about a murder mystery). Prodigy Detective Naoto Shirogane devises a plan to confirm his [[spoiler: or rather '''her''']]] suspicions that the police caught a copycat killer, not the real killer. [[spoiler: she '''sets herself up as bait for the kidnapper''', confident that the Investigation Team will rescue her.]] When the Investigation Team find out about this, they let Naoto have it, pointing out that gambling your life on the assumption a third party will get to you in time, regardless of the rewards involved, is '''''really, really fucking stupid'''''.
* The entirety of ''[[VideoGame/AssassinsCreed Assassin's Creed]]'' is actually ''two'' giant {{Batman Gambit}}s. The first, planned by TheDragon, Robert de Sable, involves using the Assassins' killing of his lieutenants, all of whom are important members of Saladin and Richard the Lionheart's respective support networks, to unite the Saracen and Crusader armies to crush the Assassins. The second is planned out by [[spoiler:Al-Mualim, who plans to have [[UnwittingPawn Altair]] kill all of the Templars who knew about the Piece of Eden, because he himself is a Templar]] plotting to take over the Holy Land for himself.
** And all that was a Xanatos Gambit by Abstergo to have Desmond reveal the locations of the Pieces of Eden. By then the entire plot becomes one huge MindScrew: Abstergo are the Knights Templar who secretly are behind every technological innovation EVER, the Assassins still exist and try to stop them, Lucy might or might not be one of them, and then there's the scribbling on the wall...
*** And in ''[[VideoGame/AssassinsCreedII Assassin's Creed II]]'', it goes meta. The entire DiabolusExMachina of Ezio's life turned out to be a gambit to [[spoiler:get him into a secret vault inside the Vatican so he can receive a message he can't even understand, just so his descendant can retrieve the message from GeneticMemory centuries later. [[TheTapeKnewYouWouldSayThat The message-giver even knew that descendant's name]]. [[FridgeBrilliance Hey, its easier than walking into the Vatican nowadays - and that very security preserved the message]].]]
* In ''EternalDarkness'', the 100% twist ending reveals [[spoiler:that the entire game was just an absolute brilliant gambit run by the guardian god Mantorok so that it could eliminate the {{Eldritch Abomination}}s it was tasked with sealing before it died]].
* In ''{{VideoGame/Diablo}} II'', the fallen archangel Izual reveals that :the Dark Exile, the capturing of the Prime Evils in soulstones and the plot of ''Diablo I'' was a BatmanGambit planned by the Prime Evils and himself. This is no doubt a {{retcon}}, though.
* Laharl uses one in Episode 6 of ''{{VideoGame/Disgaea}}'' to lure all of his competitors for the Overlord's throne into Blair Forest, set up as a contest to wrest the "Deed to the Title of Overlord" from him. There is, of course, no deed, and after a mild hiccup in the form of a HopelessBossFight, Laharl and co. defeat their enemies, and he gets to claim what (he thinks) is rightfully his.
** Also used a chapter earlier by his vassal Etna, who was supposedly the mole working for another deamon trying to overthrow Larhal. Only when he finally calls her onto the carpet she reveals that not only has she been expecting him to betray her, she's hired his own underlings out from under him, and set things up so that Laharl would be more than eager to help her take out Maderas.
** Also in ''{{VideoGame/Disgaea}} 1'', [[spoiler:the entire game is a Batman gambit on the part of King Krichevskoy and Seraph Lamington, using Larharl and Flonne to unite the netherworlds, and even using Volcanus' traitorous nature.]]
** Mao's father (now a ghost) pulls off one of these in ''Disgaea3AbsenceOfJustice'' by manipulating the XanatosGambit of BigBad Aurum against him. The gambit worked by utilizing Almaz and Raspberyl's good hearts to get Mao to open up his own heart. To help further that along, his hidden right hand man Champloo (he reveals his true allegiances and how he manages to be so good at investigation at the end of the game) to guide Almaz to be a proper hero.
* ''VideoGame/StrongBadsCoolGameForAttractivePeople [[WebOriginal/HomestarRunner Episode 2: Strong Badia the Free]]'' starts off with the King of Town placing Strong Bad under house arrest for not paying his new email tax: one [[BrandX Creamy Ding Snack Cake]] for every email sent or received, effective immediately and retroactively. Once Strong Bad breaks out, he launches into a massive screwball scheme to depose the King of Town, but as it turns out it was all a Batman Gambit the King of Town executed so that he could switch jobs with Strong Bad. The endgame involves [[HoistByHisOwnPetard turning the tables]] on the King of Town by levying an obscene tax against his precious snack cakes, inciting the King of Town to revolt against ''him'' and take his old job back.
* Ghaleon of ''{{Lunar}}'' fame manipulates the heroes' altruistic tendencies through his [[VillainWithGoodPublicity immense popularity.]] [[NiceJobBreakingItHero this results in the hero giving him every single thing he wants.]]
* The entirety of ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsChainOfMemories'' is one giant Batman Gambit from Axel.
** Unfortunately, while it worked ''great'' in the game, the long-term consequences of it blew up in his face.
* The entire plot of ''VideoGame/GhostTrick'' hinges on a Batman Gambit set by [[spoiler: Ray, a.k.a Missile from an alternate timeline]] to point Sissel in the right direction. Everything turns out according to plan, because [[spoiler: he needed Sissel's Ghost Tricks and his ability to travel through phone lines; Missile-Prime couldn't prevent any of the deaths with his Ghost Swap power, nor could he travel through phones]].
* Mephiles, the BigBad of ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog2006'', pulls one using Silver. He tells Silver that Sonic is the one who will destroy the future, counting on Silver being desperate enough to change the future that he'll jump on a chance to change it without questioning any of it.
* In ''SoulNomadAndTheWorldEaters'' [[spoiler: Rakasha travels with you, confident you will be able to defeat the other World Eaters (who he views as rivals), then waits until you are trapped and helpless before striking]]
* In ''JadeEmpire'' [[spoiler:The entire game is one of these. [[MagnificentBastard He's called the Glorious Strategist for a very good reason...]]]]; ''however'', it is actually a ''double'' Batman Gambit; [[spoiler: The Water Dragon helps his plan, needing it to free herself from the Emperor, creating the conditions, including your Master killing you, whereby she can fully free herself.]]
* In ''{{VideoGame/Half-Life 2}}'' and especially Episode 2, it turns out that [[spoiler: the GMan set up about everything that happened since the beginning of the first game.]] We still don't know what is hoped to be achieved with all this, though.
** He [[EpilepticTrees appears to be opperating]] by this scheme. He doesn't even hide the fact that he manipulates people into doing his dirty work for him but simply puts them into places and situations in which their personal goals will also help his plan along.
* ''VideoGame/TheWorldEndsWithYou'' [[GambitPileup has a few of these]]:[[spoiler: Kitanji manipulates Neku into spreading his O-pins around the city, which are vital for his AssimilationPlot, Joshua manipulates Neku into becoming the best player and winning his game against Kitanji for him, and Hanekoma manipulates EVERYONE simply be relying on everyone to act according to their nature, teaching Neku about ThePowerOfFriendship , letting the IdiotHero ruin Konishi's carefully laid plans and giving TheStarscream rope to hang himself with.]]
* The entirety of ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty: ModernWarfare 2'' is one giant gambit courtesy of [[spoiler:Shepherd]]. [[spoiler:No, it's sure as hell not for a heroic cause.]]
** Some details make this a noteworthy example: short of magically discovering that the gambit exists, none of the [[UnwittingPawn Unwitting Pawns]] are even in a position to make it fail, and in fact, when one of them throws a SpannerInTheWorks that [[spoiler: Shepherd]] is clearly ''not'' expecting or planning for, it actually ends up helping him anyway. This makes it ''seem'' like a XanatosGambit on the surface, but there ''is'' a failure condition that [[spoiler: Shepherd]] would have no way of recovering from, and that's if [[spoiler: the Russian's war against the United States had succeeded instead of being turned back]].
* ''VideoGame/GodOfWar III'' revealed that the entire fucking series was a BatmanGambit designed by [[spoiler:Athena]] so that [[spoiler:she could gain the power of hope that she had in the first place but also kill all the other gods and destroy the world without implicating herself and become the one savior of mankind.]]
* [[spoiler: Kerrigan]] from ''Starcraft'' uses Batman Gambits frequently. She ends up getting [[spoiler: the Protoss]] to work with her even after [[spoiler: she's betrayed them repeatedly]], mainly by manipulating and eventually [[spoiler: abducting]] their [[spoiler: Matriarch]].
** [[spoiler: Duran]] is another user of this, manipulating [[spoiler: Du Gaulle]] into [[spoiler: killing his best friend]], as well as using [[spoiler: Kerrigan herself]] as an unknowing pawn in his scheme to [[spoiler: create a Protos/Zerg hybrid]].
** [[spoiler: Arcturas Mengsk]] is yet another possible example of this trope, getting [[spoiler: Kerrigan and Jim Raynor]] to help him out and shelter him both before and after he's [[spoiler: betrayed them on an epic scale]].
* The AI of ''GalacticCivilizations'' is [[ArtificialBrilliance smart enough]] to pull these on the player as shown in [[http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=161570&site=pcg this after-action report.]]
* Sigma's plans in ''VideoGame/MegaManX 4'' and ''5'' rely on the personalities of General, X, Zero and Maverick Hunter policy. Proto Man pulls off some impressive ones in ''Manga/MegaManMegamix'', too.
* [[BigBad Cortex's]] entire plan in ''CrashBandicoot2CortexStrikesBack'' hinged on Crash believing his story about needing the [[MineralMacGuffin crystals]] to save the planet from a cataclysm, rather than trying to find a way out of the location that Cortex had brought him at the start of the game. Of course, [[IdiotHero Crash isn't particularly bright.]]
* In ''StarWars: VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'', one can pull this off against the two Sith masters of the sith enclave on Korriban.[[spoiler: When [[TheDragon Yathura]] comes to [[PlayerCharacter Revan]] to help her betray [[BaldOfEvil Uthar]], you can agree to help her poison him. Revan can then turn around to Uthar, and tell him of Yuthara's plan. He will give Revan a device to help poison her. But then, the player can turn around and poison BOTH of them. Soon after finding the [[TheBigBoard Star Map]] both Yuthara and Uthar stand there. After explaining some Sith lore, they suddenly open that they are now going to kill the other with Revan's help. It is then up to the player to decide who he wants to help, or he can even turn on both of them at once. Turning on bot actually gives the player the ability to deliver an awesome TheReasonYouSuckSpeech, detailing how you used both's ignorance and arrogance on each other to weaken both of them so they'd be easier to kill, and it was all because they had not properly plotted a XanatosGambit.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Visual Novels]]
* In ''{{VisualNovel/Tsukihime}}'', [[spoiler:it is revealed in the later routes that almost any part of the game related to the Tohno family (any/all given routes) was all an enormous Batman Gambit of epic proportions, schemed by the maid Kohaku as an attempt to get her revenge on the Tohno family for all the horrendous abuse Makihisa dealt out to her; it fully succeeds in 2 of the endings. Don't even get fans started on this topic, as they are highly divided on to ''what'' extent things were orchestrated.]]
* The ''VisualNovel/AceAttorney'' games used these a few times.
** In the first game, Manfred von Karma had one of these as a backup plan, in case something went wrong (which, for him, has happened once in his 40 years as a prosecutor). [[spoiler:If he failed to convict Edgeworth for the murder on Gourd Lake, he was hoping that he would confess to the DL-6 incident. He did, just as planned.]]
** In case 1-5, the [[PhoenixWright main character]] himself pulled a beautiful one against [[spoiler: Damon Gant. He used a legal loophole to withhold an evidence that would have otherwise cleared Gant of the murder. The angry Gant then confessed about everything short of the murder itself to get himself off the hook. Then Wright shows the evidence, which made said confession to incriminate him of the murder.]]
** [[spoiler:Matt Engarde]], ManipulativeBastard that he is, used one to hinder his rival by [[spoiler: confessing that he had previously been in a relationship with his manager. Since his rival was currently in a relationship with his manager, he broke up out of pride. Having been heartbroken twice by the same man, she commited suicide.]]
** And in Ace Attorney Investigations 2 [[spoiler: The ''ENTIRE GAME'' turns out to have been one by the BigBad. So much so that the final case isn't so much a proper case is it is piecing together all the loose ends of the previous cases and realising they all point to one person.]]
* Half of ''VisualNovel/ApolloJusticeAceAttorney'' is about Apollo being manipulated by [[TheChessmaster Phoenix]] in his bid to reform the justice system and clear his own name. It starts when Phoenix is framed for murder by [[spoiler:his "friend", Kristoph Gavin]], whom he calls to defend him in court, but then get suspicious when Kristoph lets slip something about the death in the call, so he insists on having ''Apollo'' defend him instead, intending to [[spoiler:manipulate the trial to get Apollo to prove Gavin did it]]. And since [[spoiler:Apollo has now put his own boss in jail for murder]] this means Phoenix is now able to take Apollo under his wing to groom as his successor. Phoenix has come a long way since the first game.
** [[IndyPloy Quite a long way indeed.]]
** To a lesser extent, Klavier uses this against Apollo, letting him figure out and prove things Klavier had figured out long before, then turning these things against Apollo.
* Performed in ''VisualNovel/NineHoursNinePersonsNineDoors'' by [[spoiler: Ace. He didn't want them going into Room Three (where there was the body of a person he had killed) and knew they would end up coming back to the room. By staying behind, they wouldn't be able to send in both groups, and so he injected himself with the drugs.]]
** Of course, [[spoiler: he was part of another BatmanGambit to eliminate the other {{Corrupt Corporate Executive}}s by Zero.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Comics]]
* Ephemural orchestrates one of these in ''[[http://2kinds.com/ TwoKinds]]''. He/she/it erased Trace Legacy's memories in order to prevent him from killing a young Keidran girl named Flora, and then incited a number of incidents where Trace's SuperpoweredEvilSide emerged, generating mistrust between them, in order to eventually force Flora to return to her people and complete an arranged marriage with the prince of the Wolf Clan, thus uniting the Tiger and Wolf Clans into a force strong enough to resist the expansionistic human empire. The only thing that saved him/her/it from crossing over into GambitRoulette territory, is the fact that he/she/it has displayed literally divine powers, and could thus conceivably have arranged every apparently coincidental incident. Unfortunately for him/her/it, [[http://twokinds.comicgenesis.com/d/20050413.html somebody else had a stake in the Xanatos Gambit as well]]...
* In ''Webcomic/LookingForGroup'', it has been suggested that Cale's trials from his time in Kethenecia of the past to his return to the now-abandoned city with a group of followers is apparently a Gambit executed by the Archmage in order to create a new age for the city and prepare Cale to be a proper king. Technically speaking, it was supposed to be a XanatosGambit, but [[SpannerInTheWorks a few things went wrong]].
* In ''Webcomic/{{Freefall}}'', Sam's Gambit is [[http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff400/fv00396.htm NOT having a Gambit]], knowing that the people he's scamming will [[ParanoiaGambit think he DOES have one]], ergo thinking one up for him, in which he'll just have to show up to reap the rewards of.
* In Chapter 3 of ''Webcomic/TheAdventuresOfDrMcNinja'', most of the... somewhat unlikely events early on are orchestrated by [[spoiler: Fox News]], in order to get [[http://www.drmcninja.com/page.php?pageNum=42&issue=3 some interesting stories]]. However, their plans are thwarted by another Batman Gambit, carried out by a[[spoiler: Fox News weatherman]] that [[http://www.drmcninja.com/page.php?pageNum=43&issue=3 doesn't want]] raptor-riding banditos and whatnot distracting people from [[spoiler: the fantastic weather they're going to have this coming weekend.]] [[http://www.drmcninja.com/page.php?pageNum=44&issue=3 The title main character is not pleased.]]
* ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'''s BigBad Xykon does this to get the location of the {{MacGuffin}}. Poor, deluded Miko never even realizes she's been had.
** More recently, the [[spoiler:three fiends played V's hunger for power, revenge, and personal glory quite magnificently against V.]]
** A one page joke serves as an excellent example of the trope: [[http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0129.html This page]] shows Hayley dividing the loot. She has given herself nothing but five completely valueless rocks. The others suspect her of trying to cheat them out of valuable artifacts. They make her redivide the loot so she gets more gold, and loses out entirely on the rocks. [[DontExplainTheJoke The rocks actually are valueless -- she wanted more gold.]]
** Xykon pulls one of these in the climax of ''Start of Darkness''. [[spoiler:Redcloak's brother Right-Eye is obsessed with destroying him, and has bought a magic knife that can deliver a sneak attack to an undead creature. Xykon knew about this, and protected himself accordingly. However, he still lets Right-Eye attack, knowing full well that Redcloak will kill his own brother rather than jeopardize The Plan. And now Xykon has proof that Redcloak will not betray him, will protect his phylactery, and will sink to any depths to see The Plan come to fruition; otherwise the sacrifice he made would be meaningless.]]
* The commanding members of Starscream's Brigade do this a lot in the ''{{Insecticomics}}''. Starscream pulled his biggest Batman when Thrust, unbeknownst to himself still under the virus-induced influence of Sideways, had the Constructicons build a Hydra Cannon to power up the Fallen. Starscream knew all about this and let it happen. However, at the last minute he swapped the Mini-Cons used to power the cannon with the knockoff Mexicons, which rather than amplifying the Fallen's power completely drained it. This left the servants of Unicron helpless to avoid having their afts kicked by the Brigade.
* ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'' features this often, as a common tactic of the near-omniscient AI "Petey". He once withdrew from [[http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20050508.html an interstellar war against an entire species]] to deal with a bigger problem, because he knew exactly how his opponents would react.
-->'''Enemy officer:''' Suuuure, the quadrant ''looks'' abandoned. It always does, up until the ''screaming'' starts.
* Hawk from ''CityOfReality'' managed to outwit an enemy capable of MentalTimeTravel, and could deduce which iteration of his plan was going on from the baddie's initial reaction.
* ''SaturdayMorningBreakfastCereal'' had a great issue where the Joker pulls a Batman Gambit [[http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=588#comic on the Batman]]
* BuckGodot manages a most excellent one at the end of the [=PSmith=] storyline.
* In {{Oglaf}} (very NSFW comic, generally), this is parodied expertly by an [[http://oglaf.com/chasm/ overly clever man]].
* One of the main characters of ''BlurTheLines'' (also a very NSFW comic), Rick (who is a chubby chaser), is very good at luring overweight straight men into sexual encounters without making them realize he is doing so, such as when he [[spoiler:convinced a straight man to give him oral sex to get back at his girlfriend]] [[http://www.blur-the-lines.com/?p=140]], or when he [[http://www.blur-the-lines.com/?p=287 bet a man at PAX that he couldn't roll four evens out of ten.]] (For losing that bet, Rick had to [[spoiler:give oral sex to every fat man in the room.]])
* Lampshaded in ''{{Webcomic/Goblins}}''. When Thaco challenges Dellyn to a duel, ''both of them'' know that Thaco has some sort of trap planned. Nonetheless, Dellyn accepts when Thaco points out that the only alternative is for Dellyn to order his soldiers to kill Thaco, and bear the reputation of not being able to kill a single old, frail goblin.
* [[TheDragon Doc Scratch]] on ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'' is a ManipulativeBastard whose chosen [=MO=] involves "nudging" characters down paths they most likely would've taken anyways. For example, he exploits Vriska's spiteful nature and suggests that she [[spoiler: kill Aradia in revenge for summoning the spirits of Vriska's victims to haunt her.]]
** Unfortunately (for him), [[BadassNormal Terezi]] turns out to be [[OutGambitted even better at it.]]
** [[SweetBroAndHellaJeff The sock ruse was a... DISTACTION]]
* ''{{Collar 6}}''. This wasn't intentionally set-up, but Trina knows that [[spoiler: Michelle would never let Butterfly take Laura alone, and will sign herself over to protect her.]]
* The [[HiveMind Think Tank]] pull one off in a board game in [[http://www.collectedcurios.com/sequentialart.php?s=564 this]] ''Webcomic/SequentialArt'' strip.
* In {{Webcomic/Darken}}, Baal targets the loved ones of Gort and Mink by taking possession of Gort's brother Tyr and [[spoiler:murdering Mink's mother]] solely to make them angry. Then he "allows" a spy to be captured and has it leak false information implying that Baal's daughter is in Falloakes. Said girl is actually the daughter of Asmodeus, the most powerful Archdevil of them all. If Jill hadn't been there to reveal the truth to Gort and Mink, they would have unwittingly ruined whatever plans Asmodeus had for the surface and sparked a war between Gort's patron Mephistopheles and Asmodeus. Leaving Baal relatively squeaky clean and in a position to expand his own power base while his archrivals duked it out.
* [[Webcomic/SluggyFreelance Riff]] pulls one of these--on himself, sort of--to [[spoiler:bring Zoe back.]]
* Invoked after-the-fact in [[http://nonadventures.com/2012/01/21/a-wing-and-a-pair/ this]] installment of ''Webcomic/TheNonAdventuresOfWonderella''...
--> '''Wonderita:''' "Did you MEAN for this to happen?"
--> '''Wonderella:''' "If anyone asks, I'm gonna say I did."
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Original]]
* At the SuperheroSchool Whateley Academy in the ''WhateleyUniverse'', there are Combat Finals at the end of Fall term 2006. In one chapter of Joe Gunnarson's ''Call the Thunder'', Diamondback finds herself teamed with the Supervillain Hekate, who everyone in the entire school knows will backstab Diamondback first chance she gets. Diamond lays a very cunning BatmanGambit that only works ''if Hekate shafts her as soon as she gets the chance''. Hekate grabs the VillainBall for everything she's worth, leading to a very satisfying conclusion.
** Ayla, meanwhile, has one occur in her Birthday Party story. [[spoiler: A group plans to give her a surprise Birthday Party, but has to make sure it's an honest surprise, to someone who expects they are going to give one.]]
* From the ''WebOriginal/SCPFoundation'': [[http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/termination-order Termination Order]] is a story about two... relatively ordinary humans... assigned to kill a godlike being who causes reality to shift due to his emotional state. How do they do it? [[spoiler:They keep him calm while silently dragging him to the moon through an elaborate series of interlocking plans involving a teleporting wading pool and illusionary butterflies, where they set off a bomb.]] Seriously.
* The BigBad of ''BrokenSaints'' plays with this a bit: [[spoiler: He sends out early test signals of the transmission he plans to use to TakeOverTheWorld (sort of), knowing that there will be those who receive it and make the pilgrimage from wherever they live to his EvilTowerOfOminousness. The inquisitive minds who would accomplish such a journey are exactly the people he wants [[WeCanRuleTogether as his first apostles]], to help him spread his gospel further. It makes more sense in context.]]
* {{Maddox}} managed to pull this one off against a hate-mailer when she insulted him, calling him an "Angry Bitter Man". Instead of ripping apart the hate-mail like he usually does, he instead responded to the hate-mail in an unconventional way by saying how he was [[FreudianExcuse abused as a child]] and his writing is a way of expressing himself. She responded back to him in a somewhat understanding manner, only to have Maddox responded back: "Just Kidding. Tool."
* {{The Slender Man|Mythos}} himself pulled one of these in ''WebOriginal/WhatYouAreInTheDark''. [[spoiler: He took advantage of his own viral nature by implanting false memories into Reach, using him to "infect" the bloggers(as well as his "fandom" in general) with the idea of Revenants: supposedly humans horribly transformed into Slender Man's super-powered elite soldiers. However, he didn't realize that memories cannot be truly erased... only hidden. Reach eventually uncovered memories of his brainwashing and realized the lie. There are no revenants, only people brainwashed into thinking they are and Slender Man's enemies who believe it. This was done to scatter their attention away from Slim himself. What he'll do now that the illusion is uncovered is anyone's guess.]]
* In LandGames, Reckes uses a BatmanGambit to trick Mei into [[spoiler:betraying her allies]] using her feelings for him against her.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* An example from ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'' that '''WASN'T''' planned by The Bat: An industrialist who is secretly going broke themes his new casino after TheJoker, while all the time denying the connection. He expects this to infuriate the Joker, who will come destroy the place, which will trigger his multi-million dollar insurance policy. Unfortunately, Batman tells the Joker all this mid-rampage and he decides a better revenge is offing him instead.
* ''JusticeLeague'': A villainous version happens when Lex Luthor builds a city for the poor as a charity event and then places a huge machine under it, suspiciously whispering about it to his aide. Superman, who was invited to the event, thinks it's a bomb and wrecks half the city trying to destroy it. Turns out it was an experimental generator and now half the country hates the Justice League.
* In ''{{WesternAnimation/WITCH}}'', Nerissa uses a BatmanGambit to gain control of Kadma, one of the former Guardians, along with Kadma's [[PlotCoupon Heart of Zamballa]]. After Will and Kadma have cornered Nerissa in a quarry, Nerissa allows Kadma to defeat her in a brief battle. Kadma then goes for Nerissa's [[PlotCoupon Heart of Meridian]], and this enables Nerissa to take both Hearts and gain control over Kadma's mind.
** The last episodes of the second season of ''{{WesternAnimation/WITCH}}'' are revealed to be a BatmanGambit devised by [[spoiler:Will. The gambit consisted of enlisting Phobos's help to take the Seal of Nerissa (after making him swear on the power of Candracar that he wouldn't keep it), and then, after his predictable betrayal, maneuvering him into attacking Candracar, at which point (because of his broken vow) he would forfeit the seal and everything he'd gained by it.]]
*** Of course, this plan [[spoiler:failed due to one small snag - Phobos' right hand man Cedric having enough of Phobos' crap and ''eating him and the power right then and there!'']]
* Sideways, agent of [[spoiler: Unicron and thus chaos]] in ''Anime/TransformersArmada'' is a master at this. First he encourages Hot Shot's already cocky nature, leading to him [[spoiler: going to the Decepticon base on his own and getting captured.]] Then he works on Starscream's lack of self-esteem and Megatron's paranoia about his position to make them fight each other. The only error in his plan was that for all his manipulations and prodding of egos, [[spoiler: Megatron never killed Starscream.]]
* And in ''WesternAnimation/TransformersAnimated'', Optimus Prime pulls one of these. In "Decepticon Air", he [[spoiler:tells Jazz (out loud) to get to the control panel and turn the decontamination chamber into a freezing one so they can lure the attacking 'Cons into it, but as he speaks, his shoulder badge flashes multiple times. Obviously, they overhear. Sentinel gets held hostage, and Optimus tells the jet twins to surrender and trust him, getting them all herded into the chamber. Turns out, similar to the ''Superman II'' example above, the flashing badge was "optical code" for Jazz to wire it so that everything outside the chamber is frozen.]] If the 'Cons had just used stasis cuffs, instead of deciding to be arrogant and mock Optimus, or if Sentinel hadn't shouted out that order, persuading the 'Cons to use him as a hostage, it all would have gone to the Pit.
** And in "Endgame, Part 1", Megatron uses one for [[spoiler:his three Omega Supreme clones. Knowing that with his personality, the clones would probably overthrow him, and also knowing that [[TheStarscream Starscream]] would try to get the activation code himself to use the clones, he bet on Lugnut pouncing on Starscream to stop him. It went perfectly - Lugnut got the codes, and Megatron got three walking, flying weapons of mass destruction (in more ways than one, it turned out) controlled by his most fanatically loyal Decepticons.]]
** Long before either examples, in "Autoboot Camp", [[spoiler: Shockwave (a.k.a Longarm)]] pulls one off. [[spoiler: He knows that Bumblebee overheard his conversation with Megatron and that Bumblebee has asked for his help in exposing the spy: Wasp. After providing more evidence towards Wasp's "treachery" while guiding [[UnwittingPawn Bumblebee]] along the way, Shockwave plants evidence in Wasp's locker, [[RedHerringMole setting him up take the fall.]] In the end, Wasp is arrested for treason, and Shockwave goes on to become Head of Cybertron Intelligence.]] If Bumblebee would've told Sentinel about [[spoiler: the possible Decepticon spy,]] things wouldn't have went as well as it did.
* [[WesternAnimation/BeastWars Megatron's]] plan to [[spoiler: reactivate the Nemesis to destroy the Maximals and the dormant Autobots]] is dependent on Tarantulus being his usual treacherous self, [[spoiler: fixing the ship by himself in an effort to escape from Prehistoric Earth and leave everyone else behind]]. The plan would have failed if [[spoiler: Tarantulus had not been killed with the Vok and had taken the ship himself, or if Tarantulus had never found the ship in the first place and repaired it.]]
** Using the [[spoiler: Nemesis]] wasn't Megatron's plan before [[spoiler: Tarantulus was killed]]. Megatron was investigating Tarantulus's ruined lair for ''something'' that would be useful, since Tarantulus always had ''something'' up his sleeve that Megatron could use to his advantage. That ''something'' just happened to be [[spoiler: the Decepticon Flagship]]
* In the ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'' episode "Failure is not a Factory-Installed Option", after a car salesman messes with Stan's head to make him buy a car he doesn't want, Stan goes insane and starts living on the streets, depriving his family of their sole source of income (his paycheck). This forces them to shop at the same discount grocery store as the car salesman. Seeing the devastation his aggressive negotiations have caused, the salesman is shamed into giving Stan a much better deal on a car. Stan then whips off his crazy homeless guy clothes and reveals this sequence of events was all part of his master plan to get the better of the salesman. The fact that this plan led to his family nearly starving and his daughter prostituting herself for grocery money [[{{Jerkass}} doesn't seem to concern him]].
** Considering how many cars he had been tricked into buying, it might have been more humiliating for the family otherwise.
** In a later episode, "Widowmaker", Francine wishes Stan was more open with her like her neighbor Julie did with her husband Craig, who has been missing for three weeks. After some "therapy" with Roger, Stan becomes very open with Francine, including the fact that he killed Julie's husband for being a blabber-mouth by order of the CIA (and going into graphic detail). Then Francine accidentally tells Julie and has to knock her out so the CIA doesn't decide to kill Stan for the same reason as Craig. Then it all turns out this a plan by Stan and Craig so Francine will quit bothering Stan, and so Craig can get away from having to talk to Julie by moving to a tropical island and taking a new wife. ''God'', Stan ([[spoiler:and Craig]]) is an '''[[{{Jerkass}} asshole]]'''.
** In "The Scarlett Getter", Stan meets an old flame from his CIA training academy and he starts to re-develop feelings for her and ignore Francine. Francine is so irritated by this hookup, she tells Roger to put on a disguise to steal Scarlett from Stan. This works, but Stan wants to break up Roger and Scarlett and hires an alien hunter to capture Roger. Stan and the hunter arrive at the cabin where Roger and Scarlett are planning to have sex, where it turns out that [[spoiler: Scarlett is an alien hunter herself. She knew Stan had an alien in his house before thir "chance" encounter each other and used Stan to get to Roger and dissect him.]]
* In the penultimate episode of ''WesternAnimation/DannyPhantom'', Valerie tricks [[OppositeSexClone Danielle]] into leading her to Danny so she can capture "two Danny Phantoms for the price of one."
** That one was nothing compared to the one Clockwork the Time Ghost pulled in TheMovie, "The Ultimate Enemy". Knowing everything that would happen, he manipulated events which lead to Danny encountering the evil monster he could become so he could overcome it, change his future, gain his sister as a confidant, and develop his most powerful ability ten years early, while at the same time, pull his evil self out of time so he couldn't harm his own timeline anymore. The only side effect is now that if he ever gets loose, he'll be free to travel into Danny's time without anything to teether him.
* In the third season opener of ''ReBoot'', Mainframe security forces have been shot out of the sky by Megabyte's military and Dot needs the few remaining to return to the Principle Office. To get enough time to lower their shields and get the survivors back inside, Dot tells them to move into a single file line to approach the hanger bay. Such a tactic would be insane, but Dot knew Megabyte's military tactics. The enemy forces took position on both sides of the allied forces and prepared to shoot them down in the crossfire. With the enemy fighters in neat little groups of their own, the good guys were able to lower shields, gun down the attacking forces with the base turrets and bring in the survivors all in one move. It didn't work out quite as clean as on paper, though.
* BugsBunny demonstrates his mastery of the BatmanGambit in many cartoons, but rarely comes up against a worthy opponent, and will inevitably use simple [[KarmicTrickster tricks]], like misdirection and "pronoun trouble", to manipulate his enemies.
** [[DuckSeasonRabbitSeason Rabbit Season! Duck Season! Rabbit Season! Duck Season!]]
* On a handful of occasions, the characters in ''WesternAnimation/CodeLyoko'' would use one of these to force XANA to act in a manner they desired, namely when they were out of options. XANA wants Aelita alive from Seasons 2 to 4, so they would often put her in harm's way to force its hand. This was most memorable when Jérémie ordered Odd to [[ShootTheHostage shoot Aelita in episode "Saint Valentine's Day", where devirtulization would have meant death for her.]]
* {{Magneto}} brilliantly pulls 95% of one in ''{{WesternAnimation/X-Men Evolution}}'''s Season 2 finale "Day of Reckoning", manipulating four different factions -- the X-Men, the Brotherhood, Bolivar Trask's private army, and his Acolytes in order to: reveal to the world the existence of mutants, out Trask's group and destroy their Sentinel prototype, brand the X-Men as fugitives, and severely drain his enemies' resources. Only one unaccounted-for factor -- [[ScarletWitch his daughter, Wanda Maximoff]] -- prevents it from going perfectly.
** Mesmero likes this too. In "Under Lock and Key," he brainwashes Gambit into stealing one half of a spider stone, knowing that Magneto would stop him and capture Mesmero, that Magneto would have Mastermind check his mind for info on the spider, and that they'd find out its identity as a key but ''not'' learn how to use it. (We're starting to edge into GambitRoulette territory hereabouts.) Turns out [[spoiler: [[NiceJobBreakingItHero/WesternAnimation uniting the stones would free the spider monster, which only Magnet could defeat. Turns out the monster's a guardian, and with its death, one more of the three doors opened.]]]] Using other people is his favorite tactic, and his best work ''isn't'' via MindControl.
* In the ''GIJoe'', "Mass Device" story, GI Joes stages a phony internal message telling of their supposed surrender to Cobra, successfully banking on their enemy intercepting it and being fooled by what they are listening in on. As a result, Joe buys itself enough time to hunt down the last of the elements it needs; however, Destro, although fooled himself to a degree, is not taking any chances and proceeds to retrieve the same materials himself.
* ''GIJoeRenegades'' features James "Soon to Be Destro" [=McCullen=] attempting to pull this off by baiting the Joes into attacking Cobra so he can pressure Cobra for a major contract. Backfires horrifically as he ''literally'' [[YouHaveNoIdeaWhoYoureDealingWith did not know who he was dealing with]].
* In the season two finale of ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'', Azula and her two minions dress up as Kyoshi warriors in order to infiltrate Ba Sing Se and get in with the Earth King in order to get information about the current state of affairs in the city. She then has her minions pretend to let slip that they are Fire Nation in front of the Dai Li in order to get them to capture her and bring her before Long Feng (their recently imprisoned leader) so he can blackmail her into helping the Dai Li organise a coup against the Earth King. While organising the Dai Li, she uses her charisma and intimidation to leave them in awe and fear of her. When Long Feng ([[ReliableTraitor inevitably]]) tries to betray her and finds the Dai Li won't go through with it, she points out that they are intimidated enough of her that they'll just stand back and see what happens, before giving a HannibalLecture to Long Feng which gets him to submit to her. To top it all off, she gets Zuko to help her take on Aang and Katara, by dangling the first actual, tangible opportunity to fulfill his mission and restore his honour. Thus, she with the help of only two warriors (who [[BadassNormal aren't Benders]]) and her own wits, she manages to achieve in a matter of days what whole armies couldn't in a whole century.
** Zuko's attempt to use this Gambit against Azula in the GrandFinale is brutally subverted. He attempts to bait the already insane Azula into shooting lightning at him so he can redirect it back at her. Azula, being DangerouslyGenreSavvy, chooses instead to shoot the lightning at Katara instead.
* ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb''
** In the Christmas Episode, [[spoiler: Santa Claus]] pulls off a beautiful Batman Gambit, delivering a device to [[spoiler: Doofenschmertz]] that would enable him to brand all of Danville as Naughty, while at the same time sending [[spoiler: Perry the Platypus]] a CD with a note sharp enough to shatter said device. When all of Danville is branded naughty, and it looks like Santa Claus won't put in an appearance, Phineas, Ferb, and their friends team up with a couple of elves, who have come to investigate why a whole town would be labeled as naughty. [[spoiler: It turns out to be a deliberate act to allow everyone to get their Christmas wish. Doofenshmertz finds a reason to "hate" Christmas, a villainous area he felt he was deficient in, Buford performs a selfless act, thus allowing all of his friends to see him as nice. Baljeet delivers a gift to a cute girl, thus earning a kiss from her, Candace finds out that she really does know Jeremy quite well, as she got him the perfect gift, and Phineas got to be just like his hero, Santa.]] Ferb got a harmonica, but it wasn't really intrinsic to the Gambit.
** In [[PhineasAndFerbTheMovieAcrossThe2ndDimension the movie,]] Candace pulls one off against the ''workings of her universe,'' by trying to show Mom [[spoiler: the giant robot army attacking Danville, [[GenreSavvy knowing that anything massive her brothers are involved in will]] ''[[ContrivedCoincidence somehow]]'' [[GenreSavvy go away before Mom sees it.]]]]
* On ''JohnnyTest'', Johnny himself has managed to pull off a few Batman gambits, such as [[spoiler: going without bathing just so his family, after multiple failed attempts to get him cleaned up, will give in just so he can get a water park for his best friend's birthday]], or the time he wanted to get his sister's time machine so [[spoiler: after failing the first time, he had Dukey in the future take it while the family was having dinner then come back to pick im up.]] Dukey even notes that he's not as dumb as you might think.
* In ''TurtlesForever'', the [[ComicBook/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtlesMirage Mirage Turtles]] lure the [[WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2003 2003 Shredder]] out of his Technodrome by calling him a coward. It works, and Shredder literally jumps [[spoiler:into an ambush, not just by the Mirage Turtles, but the [[WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles1987 other]] [[WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2003 Ninja Turtles]] that he thought he killed earlier.]]
-->[[spoiler:'''2003 Leonardo:''']] If there's one constant in TheMultiverse, it's the Shredder's big fat ego!
* In the two-part pilot of ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'', main character Twilight Sparkle's mentor, Princess Celestia, sends her to Ponyville to make some friends, right after she warned her about an [[PropheciesAreAlwaysRight ancient prophecy of doom]]. Turns out, her mentor predicted this. Thanks to her understanding of friendship in the second part, Twilight and her new friends saved the world.
** Parodied in ''MyLittlePonyCamaraderieIsSupernatural'', in which Princess Celestia's letter to Twilight includes the post-script "This [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial totally isn't]] a thinly-veiled Batman Gambit meant to prevent the impending Pony Apocalypse. For serious."
** Princess Celestia continues to use some variant of this in pretty much every major appearance thereafter, reasons varying from trying to teach Twilight and friends something, to using Twilight and friends as pawns to get out of having to sit through a boring soiree.
*** To playing pranks on inattentive waiters to screwing with the animal lover's head (but at least she made the bird apologize)...she really loves this trope.
* In one episode of a CartoonNetwork [[NoExportForYou Latin American bumper]], ''AquamanAndFriendsActionHour'', Lex Luthor tries to sabotage Comicbook/{{Aquaman}}'s kids show by making [[RubeGoldbergHatesYourGuts an overly complicated scheme]] that will make a tractor, a mortal cobra, and a [[NinjaPirateZombieRobot tractor driven by the mortal cobra]] (among other things) suddenly assault the live stage, and activates when Aquaman plays the guitar in an announced singalong. Lex even states that "[[PunctuatedForEmphasis it. cannot. fail]]!". At the end [[spoiler: it fails because Aquaman never actually ''plays'' the guitar and do playback instead. [[SpringtimeForHitler A Janitor at the night, however...]]]].
* An episode of ''JimmyTwoShoes'' had [[spoiler: Lucius]] pull off a rather impressive one to prank [[AllBikersAreHellsAngels The Rodeo Clowns]].
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' episode "Sideshow Bob Roberts" Lisa figures she can get Sideshow Bob to admit he rigged the election by insinuating he was a lackey to [[NoCelebritiesWereHarmed Birch Barlow]].
-->'''Bob''': Only I could have executed such a masterpiece of electoral fraud. And I have the records to prove it! Here, just look at these -- each one a work of Machiavellian art!
* In the ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' episode "Spookyfish", the boys meet the evil Eric Cartman from a MirrorUniverse. Being the opposite of the real Cartman, he is kind and helpful. Cartman rips off his counterpart's {{beard|OfEvil}} after he finds out that Stan and Kyle are going to send him to the other universe in favor of evil Cartman. When Stan and Kyle are trying to decide which Cartman is the one they want to get rid of, one insists that they both have to go for the greater good. They zap the other Cartman because they know the real Cartman would never say that. However, it was the regular Cartman who said that; he knew that they would fall for it.
* ''{{Doug}}'' has one in "Doug's Big News". Roger gets everyone kicked off the news show by taking credit for the video tribute the class made for Mr. Bone. They figure getting him a present wouldn't help them get back in his good graces because Roger would take credit for it again. Doug takes advantage of this and when Roger takes the next gift, Roger gets in trouble for giving Mr. Bone pink underwear.
* In the ''DuckDodgers'' episode "Corporate Pigfall", the Eager Young Space Cadet becomes CEO of a MegaCorp, and Dodgers's new cadet is [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy_Boo Egghead Jr]]. Dodgers then enlists Egghead's help in getting the Cadet back. The Cadet eventually quits Macrovast, and ensures his position is vacant by making Egghead Jr. the new CEO. The final scene is of Egghead writing on his notepad "Exactly as I planned."
* In one episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheClevelandShow'', Donna breaks her leg and guilt trips Cleveland into taking care of her and the household. Cleveland does everything he can to please Donna and she takes advantage of his by making him come up to her room for every little thing she wants. Cleveland's friends notices how soft he has gotten and they confront Donna, thinking she's not really disabled at all, and try to prove she is faking it by pushing her down a flight of stairs. Donna turns out to be just fine as she got up at the last minute and admits she is pretending to be crippled because she knows that Cleveland will push himself to take care of her since he feels guilty about not helping out more. However, [[spoiler: Cleveland knew all along that Donna was faking her injury and was working hard to make her feel guilty about having him do all the work. Once Donna got "better", she sees Cleveland is still busting his ass to please her, so she demands to resume being the housewife of the family. Cleveland pretends to agree and once Donna is working hard at home, she then realizes she was being played with all along.]]
[[/folder]]


[[folder:Real Life]]
* UsefulNotes/OttoVonBismarck, Chancellor of Prussia, successfully manipulated his enemies to unify Germany, using his ally Austria to defeat Denmark, then caused Austria to declare war on Prussia, and finally manipulated France into another war, thus creating the political climate to unite the many German states into a single one. He pulled some of this off by taking advantage of pre-existing circumstances and he lured enemies (and his boss!) into traps several times. Then again, a man wearing [[NiceHat that formidable a hat]] is clearly working at a higher level than most.
* Also during WWII, when the allies were planning to invade southern Europe from Africa, the British launched a homeless man (who died of accidentally ingesting scraps of bread laced with rat poison) from a submarine, in an area where the Spanish would recover his body. Chained to his belt was a briefcase that explained that the invasion site would NOT be Sicily, and hinted instead it would be Greece. The Spanish under Franco, being on friendly terms with the Germans, found the body and gave the evidence to the German embassy, who bought the story, leaving the invasion site nearly undefended. It may also help that the Abwehr, which asserted the authenticity of the documents, was riddled with British agents, including its head, Admiral Canaris.
** The success of this plan, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mincemeat Operation Mincemeat]], was actually what led the Germans to disregard other information they'd actually gotten. Once the invasion was complete, they realised they'd been fooled and disregarded several other actual intelligence leaks as simple repeats of Mincemeat. Due to the effectiveness of the other [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Fortitude major deceptive operation]] this failure included the actual landings at D-Day being ruled as a repeat of Mincemeat.
* In 1967, during the Vietnam War, the U.S. Air Force faced a problem. The North Vietnamese had received several [[RedsWithRockets MiG-21 "Fishbed"]] supersonic interceptor jets. These planes were causing problems to heavy, bomb-laden flights of F-105 Thunderchief fighter-bombers ("Thuds") that were being used to attack targets in North Vietnam. Thuds were less maneuverable than Fishbeds, but the USAF's F-4 Phantom jets were better (though not by all that much) at maneuvering. Plus, leaders in Washington, D.C., forbade the bombing of North Vietnamese airbases (out of fear that if one of the many Soviet advisors in North Vietnam was killed, the Soviets would use it to start World War III). With this in mind, Colonel RobinOlds came up with what would become a ''classic'' BatmanGambit. Codenamed [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bolo Operation Bolo]], the plan consisted of using F-4 Phantoms, convincing the enemy that they were inbound Thuds (by using Thud callsigns, air routes, radar jammers, etc.), lure the Fishbeds into the air, then hit them with [=AIM-7=] Sparrow radar-guided missiles and [=AIM-9=] Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles. On January 2, 1967, the plan went into action. 12 Fishbeds intercepted the "Thuds", only to be embroiled in a dogfight with what were actually Phantoms. 7 Fishbeds were confirmed shotdown ( nearly ''half'' of the Fishbed force) once the fight was over.
** That said, before he was stationed in Southeast Asia, Colonel Olds was stationed in England as a wing commander at RAF Bentwaters, where he received terrible news: He had made the list for promotion to Brigadier General. Which meant he wouldn't be given a combat assignment. So he got his three best pilots together to put on a very unauthorized air show for an open house over the base. [[MagnificentBastard He got exactly what he had hoped for]]: He got in ''just'' enough trouble to get taken off the promotion list and sent to [[BriarPatching command a combat unit in Thailand]] as punishment.
* The Athenian politician Themistocles, seeing the Persian threat, convinced the Athenians to spend the proceeds from a lode of silver to build a large navy, naming a threat from Greek rivals (Persia seemed too distant to the people). He then formed a battle plan to defend the pass at Thermopylae while the Allied (largely Athenian navy) held the Strait of Artemisium so the Persians couldn't sail around. When the Spartans were reluctant to deploy their armies far away from their home, Themistocles goaded them into it by successfully pledging the entire able-bodied population of Athens to man the allied Greek fleet. When the Spartan naval commander wanted to run from the approaching Persians, who outnumbered the Greeks six to one, Themistocles secured a large bribe to have the fleet stay there and defend the people. He subsequently took the initiative in the sea battle by attacking the Persians in the late afternoon when they off guard, so that that it would be dark by the time the Persians got their act together (the Greeks could withdraw more easily.) After holding the strait until the Spartans were defeated, Themistocles sailed back to Athens to evacuate everyone, leaving messages at all the towns along the way for the Ionians, Greek allies of Persia, in the Persian fleet to make Xerxes distrust them. Then, playing on Xerxes' desire to conquer the Greeks totally, he tricked the Persian fleet into an ambush in the Strait of Salamis, destroying most of their troop ships and crippling Persia's invasion force.
** Simultaneously, King Leonidas of the rival Spartans was killed at Thermopylae, thus weakening one of Athens' domestic enemies. This may have [[MagnificentBastard been entirely intentional]].
* This is how the 17th president of the U.S., AndrewJohnson, was impeached. Congress passed the (unconstitutional) Tenure of Office Act, which basically said that the president couldn't fire any of his appointees without Congressional consent. The Radical Republicans knew that Johnson would fire his Secretary of War and thus violate this act, so they just sat back and [[PassThePopcorn sold tickets to the trial]].
* There is a card trick that can be done where you ask the volunteer to pick this or that, guiding them towards the preferred answer no matter what they say. If you want them to pick pile A and they pick pile A, good, picking it means keeping it. They pick pile B? You say nothing and pretend as if picking it meant discarding it. Rinse and repeat until you get the final card. Most people won't notice it's being done to them unless they've had it played on them before and/or they're looking for it.
** These tricks cross the line between a XanatosGambit and BatmanGambit. A more concrete example is the story of Hotel 52. You select a card with a notable feature (say, the Queen of Hearts), loaded it where appropriate, and begin the story of Hotel 52, where you had a dream Hotel 52 is holding a ball and all the cards are attending. You ask for help finishing the dream and say, "Suddenly, the hotel caught fire! ''Embellish to taste.'' The fire is burning to the cards. Quick, is it burning to the Black Cards or the Red Cards?" If they say Black, you say, "Oh no, all the Black cards burned up. The Red ones see the danger, and now they're running!" If they say Red, you say, "The Black cards escaped and are safe. Now the Red ones are in danger, and they're running!" Continue until only the Queen of Hearts is left to escape.
* NapoleonBonaparte laid a masterful Batman Gambit in 1805 at the Battle of Austerlitz against both the Russians and Austrians. Having already destroyed an Austrian force months earlier, Napoleon knew he needed a decisive victory over the Third Coalition (as the allied cause was known) to not just win the war, but keep his army together, as he was far from home and had campaigned long and hard. Knowing it would take the Russians a long time to arrive in Austria, Napoleon was able to pick the site of his decisive battle, and making sure the allies saw his deployment, intentionally withdrew his center from the Pratzen Heights, which dominated the area and allowed the Russians to occupy them, while also intentionally making his right flank seem like the weakest part of his army. The allies couldn't resist an opportunity to outflank him, so sent waves after waves of men against Napoleon's right, drawing off reserves from their center in this attempt. Napoleon immediately had his center storm the Pratzen Heights, taking the Russians by surprise, driving the center off and swinging right, trapping the bulk of the allied army and routing them. Bear in mind that Napoleon was outnumbered by nearly 15,000 men, he inflicted nearly twice that many casualties on the allies while only suffering about 7,000 of his 65,000 man army. It's widely considered Napoleon's greatest tactical victory.
** Particularly notable because the Russian general Kutuzov, who had actually occupied the Heights, had saw through the ruse and ignored orders from his immediate superior Von Weyrother (Austrian general and commander of the combined Austrian-Russian army) of leaving to attack Napoleon. The battle ended in a Napoleonic victory because the czar Alexander I considered Kutuzov an old fool and forced him to obey Von Weyrother. Alexander would learn his lesson, and when Napoleon later invaded Russia he ordered Kutuzov to stop Napoleon. Kutuzov would later pull a BatmanGambit on Napoleon, letting him waste the ''Grande Armée'' in a vain offensive against Moscow under the impression that Russia would surrender and then keeping him there until winter, and blocking Napoleon's only way to retreat where there was any food.
* In 1573, after getting his butt kicked at Mikatagahara, future ruler of Japan Tokugawa Ieyasu tried Zhuge Liang's "Empty Fortress" strategy. Rather than close the gates to the castle and allow the enemy to overrun his army, he left the gates wide open, lit the way with huge braziers, and even had a vassal beat drums. The enemy saw this whole arrangement, and decided that Ieyasu was up to something shady, and camped for the night.
* Brazilian president Jânio Quadros tried this in 1961. He ousted himself from office, accusing "hidden forces" of plotting his downfall. He expected to be supported by the people and make a triumphant return. It failed.
* Ask a volunteer to picture a simple geometric shape, "like a circle or a square." Now that you have eliminated two of the three most likely possibilities, they are almost certainly thinking of a triangle. Congratulations! You're a mind reader!
* During WorldWarOne, one of the ways some of the Allied soldiers got themselves out of the frontline is by shooting themselves in the foot or the hand. The higher-up is then forced to take the wounded soldier out of the frontline, thus saving his life from ([[WarIsHell probably]]) certain death. May also count as DeliberateInjuryGambit.
** The failure condition came from the commander in chief of the army possibly anticipating this and ordering the doctors to report what weapon had caused the wound, the bullet angle and if the shoe or the skin had burns around the wound, thus determinating if the wound was self-inflicted. In the Italian Army that meant execution.
* Most forms of Blackmail and Kidnapping are this. While they appear to be other forms of Gambits because the victim has NO CHOICE, they really do. The other option is to not allow the blackmailer/kidnapper to win at all. The victim goes to the police and reports the crime. For blackmail, the secret is exposed. This can be turned in favor of the victim if they confess to the public before the blackmailer does. For the kidnapping, the police DO know what they are doing in those cases. There is always a chance of the kidnapped being killed already or killed to cover the crime. For the best, the victim should contact the police. A simple answer that may trip up the gambit and derail the entire problem safely.
* Director ChristopherNolan wanted to bring ''{{Film/Inception}}'' to the screen. To do so, he had to show the PowersThatBe that he could direct, as well as gain experience for his magnum opus. Thus, Nolan ''actually uses Batman'' (through directing ''[[TheDarkKnightSaga Batman Begins]]'' and ''{{The Dark Knight|Saga}}'') as a Batman Gambit to bring ''Inception'' to the screen.
* According to "TheIllusionOfLife", WaltDisney himself was this. Everytime his staff came to talk about subjects he did not want to discuss, he would do anything in his power to make them go into an unimportant conversation (be it by flattering their style of drawing, their animation, their ties ...). Then, when everybody had their guard down, he would come out with an excuse and leave before anyone noticed he didn't answer the questions.
-->''"Hey, wait a minute! Do you realize we didn't get a word in?"''
* The [[ArabIsraeliConflict 1956 Suez Crisis]] gives us possibly the most poorly-executed Batman Gambit ever to have been tried. After Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, the British and French realized that this was very, very bad for them. They enlisted the help of the Israelis, who, according to the plan, attack Egypt, taking over the whole Sinai Peninsula; when the Israelis got close to the Canal, the British and French would parachute in to separate the Egyptian and Israeli forces "in the interests of international peace and security". The hope was that the international community, and particularly the US and USSR, would be fooled into thinking that the British and French were genuinely responding to an emergency of which they had no foreknowledge. If it worked, it would all be seen as legitimate and have the blessing of the superpowers and the UnitedNations, while securing British and French interests in the Canal and giving Israel a gigantic buffer zone against its most powerful neighbor. This [[XanatosBackfire backfired spectacularly]]: everyone saw through the plan, leading both the US and Soviet Union to condemn the three of them, while the UN made them hand back the land they took and otherwise be humiliated.
* Hannibal's victory over the outnumbering [[AncientRome Romans]] in the Battle of Cannae was pretty much a result of this. Hannibal curved his battle line forward in hopes of goading the Romans into focusing their attack on their center, in which they did. Hannibal would then use the rest of his infantry to flank the Romans. Meanwhile, his cavalry would need to defeat the Roman cavalry and surrounded the Romans on all sides. Above all, the plan would rely on the Romans going into disarray once they got encircled instead of trying to make a concerted effort to break out. Needless to say, [[CurbStompBattle it was successful]].
* Many of SOPA's biggest backers are the companies that developed and distributed file-sharing software in the first place.
[[/folder]]

----

* ''Uncanny ComicBook/{{X-Men}}'' used this trope recently. Madelyne Pryor attempts a FusionDance with Jean Grey, whom she was cloned from. She steals a lock of Jean's hair from the X-base for the ritual and gets to the gravesite, only to fall victim to a switcheroo. The X-Men figured that was what she was going to do and not only switched Jean's body with someone a host who couldn't contain her power, but they had the plan figured out and executed even before she stole the hair.

* Every single fight scene in the Robert Downey Jr. ''Film/SherlockHolmes'' films is a BatmanGambit in miniature; we are treated to Holmes' inner monologue as he determines exactly how his opponents will behave and how he can best counter them, immediately followed by the actual fight in which the opponent behaves exactly as Holmes deduced he would and Holmes thus wins the fight. Subverted in the climax of ''A Game of Shadows''; Holmes and Moriarty play this trick on each other, and both determine that there's no way for Holmes to win, [[spoiler:until Holmes does something neither one expected, sacrificing himself to kill Moriarty by grabbing him and jumping off the balcony into the Reichenbach Falls below.]]

** [[spoiler: Murdering his cellmate to be put into solitary confinement. What if Rice or that other guy had paid attention when their informant told them it must have been a Batman Gambit (or just figured it out themselves, it wasn't that hard), and had taken him out of there and/or searched the cell thoroughly?]]

** [[spoiler: Let me go by six o'clock tomorrow or I'll kill everyone (with exploding cars). Failure conditions: If they ''had'' checked the gas tanks as well, or one of the people leaving would have got the same paranoid feeling as I did that the cars might explode or something, or if they ''had let him free''.]] The last might actually have crippled his ability to run the show. Of course... it wasn't very likely anyway.

*** And in ''[[VideoGame/AssassinsCreed2 Assassin's Creed II]]'', it goes meta. The entire DiabolusExMachina of Ezio's life turned out to be a gambit to [[spoiler:get him into a secret vault inside the Vatican so he can receive a message he can't even understand, just so his descendant can retrieve the message from GeneticMemory centuries later. [[TheTapeKnewYouWouldSayThat The message-giver even knew that descendant's name]]. [[FridgeBrilliance Hey, its easier than walking into the Vatican nowadays - and that very security preserved the message]].]]

[[folder:Real Life]]
* UsefulNotes/OttoVonBismarck, Chancellor of Prussia, successfully manipulated his enemies to unify Germany, using his ally Austria to defeat Denmark, then caused Austria to declare war on Prussia, and finally manipulated France into another war, thus creating the political climate to unite the many German states into a single one. He pulled some of this off by taking advantage of pre-existing circumstances and he lured enemies (and his boss!) into traps several times. Then again, a man wearing [[NiceHat that formidable a hat]] is clearly working at a higher level than most.
* Also during WWII, when the allies were planning to invade southern Europe from Africa, the British launched a homeless man (who died of accidentally ingesting scraps of bread laced with rat poison) from a submarine, in an area where the Spanish would recover his body. Chained to his belt was a briefcase that explained that the invasion site would NOT be Sicily, and hinted instead it would be Greece. The Spanish under Franco, being on friendly terms with the Germans, found the body and gave the evidence to the German embassy, who bought the story, leaving the invasion site nearly undefended. It may also help that the Abwehr, which asserted the authenticity of the documents, was riddled with British agents, including its head, Admiral Canaris.
** The success of this plan, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mincemeat Operation Mincemeat]], was actually what led the Germans to disregard other information they'd actually gotten. Once the invasion was complete, they realised they'd been fooled and disregarded several other actual intelligence leaks as simple repeats of Mincemeat. Due to the effectiveness of the other [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Fortitude major deceptive operation]] this failure included the actual landings at D-Day being ruled as a repeat of Mincemeat.
* In 1967, during the Vietnam War, the U.S. Air Force faced a problem. The North Vietnamese had received several [[RedsWithRockets MiG-21 "Fishbed"]] supersonic interceptor jets. These planes were causing problems to heavy, bomb-laden flights of F-105 Thunderchief fighter-bombers ("Thuds") that were being used to attack targets in North Vietnam. Thuds were less maneuverable than Fishbeds, but the USAF's F-4 Phantom jets were better (though not by all that much) at maneuvering. Plus, leaders in Washington, D.C., forbade the bombing of North Vietnamese airbases (out of fear that if one of the many Soviet advisors in North Vietnam was killed, the Soviets would use it to start World War III). With this in mind, Colonel RobinOlds came up with what would become a ''classic'' BatmanGambit. Codenamed [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bolo Operation Bolo]], the plan consisted of using F-4 Phantoms, convincing the enemy that they were inbound Thuds (by using Thud callsigns, air routes, radar jammers, etc.), lure the Fishbeds into the air, then hit them with [=AIM-7=] Sparrow radar-guided missiles and [=AIM-9=] Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles. On January 2, 1967, the plan went into action. 12 Fishbeds intercepted the "Thuds", only to be embroiled in a dogfight with what were actually Phantoms. 7 Fishbeds were confirmed shotdown ( nearly ''half'' of the Fishbed force) once the fight was over.
** That said, before he was stationed in Southeast Asia, Colonel Olds was stationed in England as a wing commander at RAF Bentwaters, where he received terrible news: He had made the list for promotion to Brigadier General. Which meant he wouldn't be given a combat assignment. So he got his three best pilots together to put on a very unauthorized air show for an open house over the base. [[MagnificentBastard He got exactly what he had hoped for]]: He got in ''just'' enough trouble to get taken off the promotion list and sent to [[BriarPatching command a combat unit in Thailand]] as punishment.
* The Athenian politician Themistocles, seeing the Persian threat, convinced the Athenians to spend the proceeds from a lode of silver to build a large navy, naming a threat from Greek rivals (Persia seemed too distant to the people). He then formed a battle plan to defend the pass at Thermopylae while the Allied (largely Athenian navy) held the Strait of Artemisium so the Persians couldn't sail around. When the Spartans were reluctant to deploy their armies far away from their home, Themistocles goaded them into it by successfully pledging the entire able-bodied population of Athens to man the allied Greek fleet. When the Spartan naval commander wanted to run from the approaching Persians, who outnumbered the Greeks six to one, Themistocles secured a large bribe to have the fleet stay there and defend the people. He subsequently took the initiative in the sea battle by attacking the Persians in the late afternoon when they off guard, so that that it would be dark by the time the Persians got their act together (the Greeks could withdraw more easily.) After holding the strait until the Spartans were defeated, Themistocles sailed back to Athens to evacuate everyone, leaving messages at all the towns along the way for the Ionians, Greek allies of Persia, in the Persian fleet to make Xerxes distrust them. Then, playing on Xerxes' desire to conquer the Greeks totally, he tricked the Persian fleet into an ambush in the Strait of Salamis, destroying most of their troop ships and crippling Persia's invasion force.
** Simultaneously, King Leonidas of the rival Spartans was killed at Thermopylae, thus weakening one of Athens' domestic enemies. This may have [[MagnificentBastard been entirely intentional]].
* This is how the 17th POTUS, AndrewJohnson, was impeached. Congress passed the (unconstitutional) Tenure of Office Act, which basically said that the president couldn't fire any of his appointees without Congressional consent. The Radical Republicans knew that Johnson would fire his Secretary of War and thus violate this act, so they just sat back and [[PassThePopcorn sold tickets to the trial]].
* There is a card trick that can be done where you ask the volunteer to pick this or that, guiding them towards the preferred answer no matter what they say. If you want them to pick pile A and they pick pile A, good, picking it means keeping it. They pick pile B? You say nothing and pretend as if picking it meant discarding it. Rinse and repeat until you get the final card. Most people won't notice it's being done to them unless they've had it played on them before and/or they're looking for it.
** These tricks cross the line between a XanatosGambit and BatmanGambit. A more concrete example is the story of Hotel 52. You select a card with a notable feature (say, the Queen of Hearts), loaded it where appropriate, and begin the story of Hotel 52, where you had a dream Hotel 52 is holding a ball and all the cards are attending. You ask for help finishing the dream and say, "Suddenly, the hotel caught fire! ''Embellish to taste.'' The fire is burning to the cards. Quick, is it burning to the Black Cards or the Red Cards?" If they say Black, you say, "Oh no, all the Black cards burned up. The Red ones see the danger, and now they're running!" If they say Red, you say, "The Black cards escaped and are safe. Now the Red ones are in danger, and they're running!" Continue until only the Queen of Hearts is left to escape.
* NapoleonBonaparte laid a masterful Batman Gambit in 1805 at the Battle of Austerlitz against both the Russians and Austrians. Having already destroyed an Austrian force months earlier, Napoleon knew he needed a decisive victory over the Third Coalition (as the allied cause was known) to not just win the war, but keep his army together, as he was far from home and had campaigned long and hard. Knowing it would take the Russians a long time to arrive in Austria, Napoleon was able to pick the site of his decisive battle, and making sure the allies saw his deployment, intentionally withdrew his center from the Pratzen Heights, which dominated the area and allowed the Russians to occupy them, while also intentionally making his right flank seem like the weakest part of his army. The allies couldn't resist an opportunity to outflank him, so sent waves after waves of men against Napoleon's right, drawing off reserves from their center in this attempt. Napoleon immediately had his center storm the Pratzen Heights, taking the Russians by surprise, driving the center off and swinging right, trapping the bulk of the allied army and routing them. Bear in mind that Napoleon was outnumbered by nearly 15,000 men, he inflicted nearly twice that many casualties on the allies while only suffering about 7,000 of his 65,000 man army. It's widely considered Napoleon's greatest tactical victory.
** Particularly notable because the Russian general Kutuzov, who had actually occupied the Heights, had saw through the ruse and ignored orders from his immediate superior Von Weyrother (Austrian general and commander of the combined Austrian-Russian army) of leaving to attack Napoleon. The battle ended in a Napoleonic victory because the czar Alexander I considered Kutuzov an old fool and forced him to obey Von Weyrother. Alexander would learn his lesson, and when Napoleon later invaded Russia he ordered Kutuzov to stop Napoleon. Kutuzov would later pull a BatmanGambit on Napoleon, letting him waste the ''Grande Armée'' in a vain offensive against Moscow under the impression that Russia would surrender and then keeping him there until winter, and blocking Napoleon's only way to retreat where there was any food.
* In 1573, after getting his butt kicked at Mikatagahara, future ruler of Japan Tokugawa Ieyasu tried Zhuge Liang's "Empty Fortress" strategy. Rather than close the gates to the castle and allow the enemy to overrun his army, he left the gates wide open, lit the way with huge braziers, and even had a vassal beat drums. The enemy saw this whole arrangement, and decided that Ieyasu was up to something shady, and camped for the night.
* Brazilian president Jânio Quadros tried this in 1961. He ousted himself from office, accusing "hidden forces" of plotting his downfall. He expected to be supported by the people and make a triumphant return. It failed.
* Ask a volunteer to picture a simple geometric shape, "like a circle or a square." Now that you have eliminated two of the three most likely possibilities, they are almost certainly thinking of a triangle. Congratulations! You're a mind reader!
* During WorldWarOne, one of the ways some of the Allied soldiers got themselves out of the frontline is by shooting themselves in the foot or the hand. The higher-up is then forced to take the wounded soldier out of the frontline, thus saving his life from ([[WarIsHell probably]]) certain death. May also count as DeliberateInjuryGambit.
** The failure condition came from the commander in chief of the army possibly anticipating this and ordering the doctors to report what weapon had caused the wound, the bullet angle and if the shoe or the skin had burns around the wound, thus determinating if the wound was self-inflicted. In the Italian Army that meant execution.
* Most forms of Blackmail and Kidnapping are this. While they appear to be other forms of Gambits because the victim has NO CHOICE, they really do. The other option is to not allow the blackmailer/kidnapper to win at all. The victim goes to the police and reports the crime. For blackmail, the secret is exposed. This can be turned in favor of the victim if they confess to the public before the blackmailer does. For the kidnapping, the police DO know what they are doing in those cases. There is always a chance of the kidnapped being killed already or killed to cover the crime. For the best, the victim should contact the police. A simple answer that may trip up the gambit and derail the entire problem safely.
* Director ChristopherNolan wanted to bring ''{{Film/Inception}}'' to the screen. To do so, he had to show the PowersThatBe that he could direct, as well as gain experience for his magnum opus. Thus, Nolan ''actually uses Batman'' (through directing ''[[TheDarkKnightSaga Batman Begins]]'' and ''{{The Dark Knight|Saga}}'') as a Batman Gambit to bring ''Inception'' to the screen.
* According to "TheIllusionOfLife", WaltDisney himself was this. Everytime his staff came to talk about subjects he did not want to discuss, he would do anything in his power to make them go into an unimportant conversation (be it by flattering their style of drawing, their animation, their ties ...). Then, when everybody had their guard down, he would come out with an excuse and leave before anyone noticed he didn't answer the questions.
-->''"Hey, wait a minute! Do you realize we didn't get a word in?"''
* The [[ArabIsraeliConflict 1956 Suez Crisis]] gives us possibly the most poorly-executed Batman Gambit ever to have been tried. After Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, the British and French realized that this was very, very bad for them. They enlisted the help of the Israelis, who, according to the plan, attack Egypt, taking over the whole Sinai Peninsula; when the Israelis got close to the Canal, the British and French would parachute in to separate the Egyptian and Israeli forces "in the interests of international peace and security". The hope was that the international community, and particularly the US and USSR, would be fooled into thinking that the British and French were genuinely responding to an emergency of which they had no foreknowledge. If it worked, it would all be seen as legitimate and have the blessing of the superpowers and the UnitedNations, while securing British and French interests in the Canal and giving Israel a gigantic buffer zone against its most powerful neighbor. This [[XanatosBackfire backfired spectacularly]]: everyone saw through the plan, leading both the US and Soviet Union to condemn the three of them, while the UN made them hand back the land they took and otherwise be humiliated.
* Hannibal's victory over the outnumbering [[AncientRome Romans]] in the Battle of Cannae was pretty much a result of this. Hannibal curved his battle line forward in hopes of goading the Romans into focusing their attack on their center, in which they did. Hannibal would then use the rest of his infantry to flank the Romans. Meanwhile, his cavalry would need to defeat the Roman cavalry and surrounded the Romans on all sides. Above all, the plan would rely on the Romans going into disarray once they got encircled instead of trying to make a concerted effort to break out. Needless to say, [[CurbStompBattle it was successful]].
* Many of SOPA's biggest backers are the companies that developed and distributed file-sharing software in the first place.
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