History Main / BeatThemAtTheirOwnGame

* in ''Film/TheMatrix'', Neo and the other humans are nearly powerless in any direct confrontation with the Matrix's agents, and can only gain the upper hand through luck or the element of surprise (which is nearly impossible to obtain). Neo surprises his fellow humans by surviving a face-to-face encounter with an agent by dodging its bullets (as seen in the famous "bullet-time" scene).

* In ''[[FanFic/NewLookSeries Joe's New Look]]'' Big John tries to roast Joe by throwing flames at him. But, Joe leaps in the air and Big John's own men get burned instead.

* In an episode of ''Anime/FullMetalPanicFumoffu'', Kaname is kidnapped by a gang of thugs. Sosuke's answer is to kidnap the gang leader's younger brother, and threaten her to kill him if she doesn't release Kaname. Not only that, but he also reveals that he knows a whole awful lot about the other gang members' personal belonging and loved ones, and declare it would be a ShameIfSomethingHappened to them. This does the trick marvelously well: the gang members run away in terror, and Kaname is freed. [[spoiler:Then Sosuke reveals that it was all just a trick: he actually formed this plan together with the leader's brother, saying it was an emergency. This doesn't stop the scene from being tense, as Sosuke and the kid were both damn convincing.]]

** The Virtual Nightmare Arc in ''Anime/YuGiOh'' was nearly an entire storyline devoted to this Trope. The Big 5 thought to defeat the heroes by dueling them with the Deckmaster System, a special set of HouseRules that they thought would give them an advantage. To their dismay - and horror - the heroes adjusted to this system ''very'' quickly, and in every duel the Deckmasters played a role in the villain's defeat. (Even in Yugi's duel against Noah, where Yugi was using Kaiba's Deckmaster, which wasn't of any use to him, Yugi nearly defeated Noah after the villain carelessly summoned ''his'' Deckmaster. Noah only escaped defeat (''that'' turn) because [[ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem he could pretty much give Shinato any effect he wanted]] ''whenever'' he wanted.

* In Anime/YuGiOhGX, Judai manages to defeat a deck destruction expert by deck out. He also beats a guy using a quiz deck with a quiz of his own.

* The final battle of ''Franchise/PiratesOfTheCaribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl''. In order to even the odds between himself and the cursed undead pirates, Captain Jack Sparrow picks up a gold piece from the cursed treasure trove, transforming into an [[NighInvulnerability immortal]] undead pirate himself, allowing him to more easily buy time until the curse is broken and the evil pirates are rendered killable.

* In a championship round of ''JunkyardWars'', the Turbines stole an entire car from the Pit Crew's lot, and foiled the Crew's attempt to steal it back. This could be karma in action, as the Pit Crew had stolen some motorcycles (yes, ''several'' motorcycles) from their opponents in a previous round of the championship.

* The Virtual Nightmare Arc in ''Anime/YuGiOh'' was nearly an entire storyline devoted to this Trope. The Big 5 thought to defeat the heroes by dueling them with the Deckmaster System, a special set of HouseRules that they thought would give them an advantage. To their dismay - and horror - the heroes adjusted to this system ''very'' quickly, and in every duel the Deckmasters played a role in the villain's defeat. (Even in Yugi's duel against Noah, where Yugi was using Kaiba's Deckmaster, which wasn't of any use to him, Yugi nearly defeated Noah after the villain carelessly summoned ''his'' Deckmaster. Noah only escaped defeat (''that'' turn) because [[ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem he could pretty much give Shinato any effect he wanted]] ''whenever'' he wanted.
* Yugi was also able to beat Duke Devlin at ''Dungeon Dice Monsters'' by adapting to Duke's game rather easily, but a lot of that [[HoistByHisOwnPetard was Duke's fault]]; he had made the DDM version of Dark Magician, [[TheAce Yugi's favorite card]], ''very'' powerful and very similar to the one Yugi was familiar with. Yugi couldn't help but ''thank'' him for creating such a faithful adaptation of his best card before scoring the winning move.

* The final boss of ''VideoGame/WarioLand: Shake It!'', the Shake King uses the same techniques as Wario for the first stage of the battle, which includes charging and ground-pounding. Wario, who is smaller and faster can take advantage of certain things, like jumping on the Shake King while charging to disrupt him and run headfirst into a wall.
** There's also B Bunny, a rabbit type boss in ''Wario Land 2'' and 3 that has to be beaten at a variant of either basketball or football (soccer in the US), by using the boss as the ball. While the boss is trying to use Wario as the ball instead.

* In the final battle of ''KirbysReturnToDreamLand'', [[spoiler:Magolor's second form and Soul form imitates the various [[LimitBreak Super Abilities]] used by Kirby as attacks after he TurnsRed.]]

* ''VideoGame/SuperMario3DLand'' has the final boss invoke the trope against the players. [[spoiler: Bowser uses a Super Bell to gain the same scratching and wall climbing abilities like the players can. Bowser then uses Double Cherries to create up to 4 clones of himself with all of them attacking the players at the same time.]]

* Imitating your enemies' successful methods (and perhaps taking them to eleven to give you the edge over the inventor) is perfectly normal and wise behaviour in military situations. It's a lot harder than it seems though, to pull it off you often have to change much more than you are comfortable doing. Napoléons enemies imitating Napoléon and the French Revolutions methods, even taking their slogans, would be an obvious example. Japanese imitating the European powers after 1869 would be another.

* In ''VideoGame/MegaMan'' games, the titular character gains the abilities of the Robot Masters that he defeats, which are typically useful against another Robot Master. However, in ''VideoGame/MegaMan2'', Metal Man is particularly weak to his own weapon; two shots on Hard mode will take him out.

* Meta Knight, the recurring sword-wielding WorthyOpponent from the ''{{Kirby}}'' series, usually leaves a sword in the boss arena for you to take and use against him. Originally, in ''Kirby's Adventure'', he refused to start the fight until you took it, but in ''Kirby Super Star'', he will fight you if you wait several minutes without taking it. Because Meta Knight's attacks don't create stars for Kirby to inhale and spit, you can't hurt him without a power, meaning that you ''must'' use the sword to defeat him. Thankfully, you won't lose the sword if Meta Knight hits you.
** You can still beat Meta Knight in Super Star even if you choose to go powerless (or if you end up losing your power), though the method of doing so isn't immediately obvious; when he uses one of his projectile attacks, inhale it and spit it back at him. However, this is much harder than just using the sword (or another power), as not only are you at the mercy of the AIRoulette, but for the first half of the fight you must wait much longer than usual between his attacks, dodging becomes crucial to success, which is much harder to do than with most other bosses (especially with his tornado attacks), he leaves almost no breathing room between attacks during the second half, and to top it off his projectiles come out fast and can easily hit you before you have a chance to inhale them if you don't react quickly. While Ultra makes it much easier by making some of his attacks produce stars, in the original SNES version a powerless MK fight is best left until you're familiar with dodging his attacks, and is only really feasible in The Arena, where there's no time limit to worry about.

* Yugi was also able to beat Duke Devlin at ''Dungeon Dice Monsters'' by adapting to Duke's game rather easily, but a lot of that was Duke's fault; he had made the DDM version of Dark Magician, [[TheAce Yugi's favorite card]], ''very'' powerful and very similar to the one Yugi was familiar with. Yugi couldn't help but ''thank'' him for creating such a faithful adaptation of his best card before scoring the winning move.

* In Anime/YuGiOhGX, Judai manages to defeat a deck destruction expert by deck out.
** He also beats a guy using a quiz deck with a quiz of his own.
** In ''Anime/YuGiOhZexal'', Tron's entire strategy revolved around this. His two Numbers (Number 8: Heraldic King Genom-Heritage and the even stronger Number 69: Heraldry God - Coat of Arms) could both steal the effects and even the names of opposing monsters, using them themselves and leaving the opposing monsters powerless. (Thankfully, the RealLife versions of these cards are ''far'' less potent.)

* A non violent version of this occurs in one episode of ''{{Friends}}''. After Joey moves out of Chandler's apartment, Chandler gets a new roommate that is [[SanitySlippage a bit off the loose end]] and conveniently forgets Chandler's many requests to move out. Chandler then decides to beat the guy at his own game by changing the locks on the door and having Joey move back in while pretending the crazy guy was never his roommate at all. The nut job actually falls for this and leaves.

* Jushin Thunder Liger once used Asian Mist on its most famous user, The Great Muta.

* ''BoardGame/Chess'' Grandmaster Jan Timman is known for using his opponents' favorite opening lines against them. Sometimes this backfires, but often it works and he wins, partially due to the psychological difficulties of essentially "playing against yourself".

* The ''{{Naruto}}'' character Kakashi Hatake is known as the "Copy-Ninja" for his ability to flawlessly copy an enemy's moves, using his Sharingan eye, ''even as they are performing them''.

* In [[{{Asterix}} The Twelve Tasks of Asterix]] they face a trial that the magic potion has no effect on... Bureaucracy! However, Asterix is smart enough to play the system against itself, causing enough chaos for the head of the place to just hand him the item to make him go away.

* In ''VideoGame/SonicColors'', the FinalBoss uses Wisp powers against Sonic, who had been using them up to this point, complete with even having the same announcer.

* WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender: Said word for word by Long Feng, but denied to Azula.