Flaw Exploitation in Comic Books.
- In the Batman/The Punisher Crossover, The Joker is cornered by the Punisher, and tries to use Batman's usual "flaw" of not killing his foes. Unfortunately for him, he doesn't know how Frank operates, and his realization of "You're really going to do it" as Frank puts a gun to his head is among the most awesome Oh, Crap! moments ever.
- In the DCU, this is the villain Prometheus's shtick. In his first appearance, he used it to take down every single member of the Justice League of America, with the exception of Superman, who was going through his "Superman Blue" phase. Since he was immune even to kryptonite, Prometheus threatened to kill several hundred innocent bystanders unless Superman committed suicide.
- Prometheus took this trope into overdrive when he was used as the main villain for the 2010 miniseries Cry for Justice. The sixth issue features him infiltrating the Watchtower and effortlessly taking down half the League all by himself. By this time he's refined his technology to the point where his helmet can effortlessly pinpoint the weaknesses for each Leaguer he faces and which he then capitalizes on - shooting Supergirl with an Amazon-forged bullet, silencing Zatanna before she can use her magic, and so on.
- Part of Doctor Strange's bag of tricks, particularly when dealing with massively overpowered enemies. Dimension Lord Dormammu, for example, wants to beat Strange in a way which gratifies his pride, so Strange can usually trick him into fighting 'fair' (when he could annihilate Strange with a single glance).
- Fantastic Four: Reed Richards periodically is able to bait Doom into getting careless by playing to his overwhelming ego.
- Scooby-Doo! Team-Up: In "A Superfriend in Need", Velma manages to employ Bizarro's backwards thinking to make him leave Shaggy and Scooby alone and attack some of the Legion of Doom — after all, for a person who thinks backwards, the logical thing to do is leave one's enemies alone and fight one's friends.
- In Sonic the Comic, during the "Robotnik Reigns Supreme" arc, Sonic, after being Brought Down to Normal and pitted against an evil Knuckles by the now-godlike Robotnik, exploits the good doctor's ego, goading him into restoring Sonic's speed and Knuckles' memories of the original history by pointing out that Robotnik would have never tried to use Knuckles to fight the weakened Sonic unless he was still scared of losing. As a result, Sonic and Knuckles use the Grey Emerald to strip Robotnik of his powers and revert all of his changes.
- Superman:
- In War World, Mongul kidnaps Superman's three friends to blackmail him into doing his bidding.
- The Phantom Zone: General Dru-Zod takes advantage of Superman's trustfulness to mind-controlling his friend Charlie Kweskill into stealing electronic components without Superman suspecting anything.Dru-Zod: And it never occurred to him to connect "Charlie" with the thefts. His mind does not work that way. Superman is highly intelligent, very clever, but not by nature mistrusting. He knows Charlie as a diligent worker with a problem— not as a master thief. And by the time he learns the truth— it will be too late— for him— and all of Earth.
- In Red Daughter of Krypton, several villains try to exploit Supergirl's unwillingness to let innocent people be hurt.
- Knowing Supergirl is on the verge of a fit of rage, Lobo pushes all her Berserk Buttons so she cannot fight effectively, and then he moves the fight to New York, thinking that she will not dare to fight in the middle of a city. Subverted because he made Kara so irrationally, blindingly furious that she couldn't think anything other than "Trash Lobo NOW!"
- Later on, a body-snatcher enemy fights Supergirl in a city and possesses -and consumes- the bodies of innocent bystanders to force her to surrender. Kara notes that he chose that location on purpose so she cannot fight freely.
- The Plague of the Antibiotic Man: Amalak knows he cannot defeat Superman physically, so he intends to exploit his compassion and humanity to destroy him psychologically by forcing him to break his vow to never kill.Amalak: "For that is his Achilles' heel— His obsessive concern with preserving life...and his lily-livered refusal to take it! I need only put him in a situation where he must kill— to destroy him psychologically!"
- Red Sonja: #50 of the first Dynamite run features Lord Kinzara, man so obsessed with hunting he claims to love it more than his own family. Sonja accompanies him on a hunt for a mythical beast known as the Cloud Tiger which takes the form of a large, terrifying white tiger. Sonja convinces Kinzara to journey to the top of a mountain with just her and leave his hunting party behind. When they are confronted by the Cloud Tiger, it is revealed that Kinzara was the leader of the bandits who murdered Sonja's family and raped her when she was a child. Sonja has spent years tracking him down and used his obsession with hunting to lure him to his doom. Sonja leaves Kinzara to be killed by the Cloud Tiger and avenges her family.
- The Transformers (IDW):
- In the climax of the mini-series The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers, human sidekick Verity is confronted by the Ax-Crazy Big Bad Overlord. She figures that Overlord's main motivation is to fight Megatron, so she exploits it by claiming that Megatron is dead. This pushes Overlord into a deep state of depression.
- In the Overlord arc of next mini-series The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, Chromedome notes of Overlord's fear of defeat (when he's defeated by Megatron on several occasions, and his defeat at the hands of the Wreckers). So, he plants a subliminal phrase during each of Overlord's failures as an insurance policy. After Overlord inevitably escapes, the phrase "Till All are One" is used as a trigger against him to temporarily send him into shock - enough so for the Autobots to get him off their ship.
- Attempted by Phobos in the fourth saga of W.I.T.C.H.: knowing that Will fears remaining alone, he subjects her to illusions of a false future in which she would be left alone by everyone she cares if she didn't surrender the Heart of Kandrakar to him. She believes him... And then nearly electrocutes him to death, sparing him only because he had switched bodies with Endarno and she wished to revert the situation and, once done that, she planned to bring him back to his cell, A Fate Worse Than Death for him.
- Wonder Woman (1987): Ares proves himself quite capable of taking advantage of his long knowledge of his fellow Olympians, at one point saying just the right thing to get Hades, Poseidon and Zeus to turn their backs to him while they were threatening the lives of two people Ares actually cared about, allowing Ares to murder Hades, capture Zeus and leave Poseidon powerless due to their location.
