Guile Heroes in Live-Action TV series.
- Coulson in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. He deals with an awful lot of HYDRA by tricking them into an Enemy Civil War with the leadership purging each other, then mopping up the now-leaderless grunts.
- Alex Rider (2020): Alex is very good at using the training his uncle quietly gave him to escape tricky situations, such as using foliage to evade pursuers. He figures out a way into Dr Greif's office so Kyra can hack the security system by first using dark powder on the keypad to show which buttons were pressed, then deducing the combination from that. In one.
- Kyra. She all but provides a page quote for this trope when she tells Alex and James they need to use their brains to escape Point Blanc (so their "Just head out onto the mountain and hope for the best" plan isn't it). When she decides she needs to escape but Alex wants to stay and find James, she heads off into the snow, leaving a nice clear trail, then quietly doubles back and rescues Alex after his cover is blown. She also escapes the safe house by stealing Crawley's security pass and successfully disappears.
Kyra: No one's getting down off that mountain. We use our brains, not our muscles! - Babylon 5:
- Londo Mollari and John Sheridan are both clear examples of this, albeit in Mollari's case an ambiguously good one.
- Sinclair had his moments too, such as the resolution to "By Any Means Necessary", in which he deals with an illegal strike by getting the shady government spook to invoke laws granting him unlimited discretion in resolving it...at which point he immediately gives the striking crew everything they wanted. And then there was Ivanova's solution to the Drazi Green-Purple conflict which was wreaking havoc on the station.
- Saul Goodman/Jimmy McGill from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul is a guile anti-hero, especially in the latter series. As a criminal lawyer, he's skilled at talking his way through situations, whether it be in a courtroom case, or when at the mercy of Ax-Crazy cartel gangsters, all while being a total Non-Action Guy.
- Boardwalk Empire:
- Nucky Thompson, though lighter on the hero part than usual, is an excellent example of this trope; he never does anything exciting personally, and he instead uses his political power and somewhat shallow, yet efficient understanding of human nature to get what he wants.
- Many characters (particularly Rothstein, Jimmy, Margaret, Meyer Lansky, and Chalky) would actually fit this trope quite well, but all of them (with the exception of Margaret and arguably Jimmy) are less scrupulous than Nucky, and none of them are as clever, and both Jimmy and Chalky have actiony moments. The Commodore is more of an out and out Magnificent Bastard.
- Michael Westen in Burn Notice is this and an Action Hero, and sometimes a Science Hero too.
- Jason Gideon and his successor David Rossi in Criminal Minds.
- Hell, just about every member of the team displays it at some point or another.
- Lt. Columbo, whose Obfuscating Stupidity and fuddy appearance conceal a brilliant detective who Always Gets His Man.
- Jeff Winger from Community is a former Amoral Attorney, and his talents lie in the fields of talking and manipulation.
- Abed Nadir is also a Guile Hero of sorts, albeit with a radically different style to Jeff's. (It's telling that in order to Guile Hero himself in the Season 4 finale, Jeff has to pretend to be Abed.)
- Control Z: Having Hyper-Awareness, Sofia is pretty deductive, allowing her to outsmart bullies such as Gerry or even discover the hacker's identity and reveal it to the other students.
- The title character of Doctor Syn ("The Scarecrow") crafts his Scary Scarecrow persona to intimidate his own smugglers, but since his day job is as a vicar, he almost always refrains from violence. Instead, he uses his trusted position to gather information and use it against the army. When he discovers a traitor in his group, he concocts a ruse that will satisfy his smugglers' desire for vengeance, terrify any other would-be turncoats out of the notion, and keep from actually killing the traitor by holding a Kangaroo Court and fake hanging.
- Doctor Who:
- The Doctor himself. Bavarian Fire Drills are his specialty. In addition, he's a Science Hero.
- No incarnation more so than the Seventh Doctor. "Remembrance of the Daleks" is one of the best examples of this, when he tricks Davros into destroying Skaro and convinces a Dalek to commit suicide.
- Dalek Caan manipulates the Doctor and his companions into defeating Davros and the New Dalek Empire.
- Irving Braxiatel from the ExpandedUniverse might just be the embodiment of this trope. In his very first appearance in Theatre Of War, he was able to out-manipulate the Seventh Doctor. Throughout his appearances in the Bernice Summerfield series, his reputation of using people as tools became legendary (to the point where, when someone asks if he isn't being too manipulative, he concludes that they haven't been introduced). It's been suggested several times that he engineered the entirety of events in the Bernice Summerfield series; for example, when his collection was occupied by a group of Fascists called The Fifth Axis, something which should be impossible because, as a Time Lord, he knew that that sector of space was never occupied, he suspected that it might be a future version of himself which had engineered the whole situation and almost killed himself in a temporal paradox (luckily, it turned out to be the Daleks, not him, who were behind it). So devious was he that he became a full-blown Magnificent Bastard in later seasons (although it may not have been entirely his fault). He's reformed now (sort of). Of course, none of this should be surprising considering that he's the Doctor's older brother.
- The Doctor himself. Bavarian Fire Drills are his specialty. In addition, he's a Science Hero.
- Adelle DeWitt in Dollhouse is an expert in playing the politics (and just plain manipulating everyone) in order to protect her House.
- Donna Stone from The Donna Reed Show was this on a domestic level, solving local and family problems through ingenious planning and subtle manipulation.
- Firefly: Simon has his moments. A doctor who has never so much as picked up a firearm before, he was able to bluff, bribe, sneak, and otherwise manipulate his way past top-secret government security in order to rescue his sister. And when the crew is in need of money, and he's in need of hospital access for his sister? He casually pulls out the contents of his medkit, quotes the black market value of each bottle, and then comes up with a detailed and mostly successful plan to pull off one of the crew's best heists. His sister, River? She's even more clever than he is, despite being mentally unstable due to the government's tampering. "Objects In Space" proved this. Nasty Bounty Hunter on board? Said Bounty Hunter has the crew outgunned and access to the engine room? River and Simon trick him into thinking she's one with the ship and distract him long enough to throw him out an airlock.
- Forever:
- In "The King of Columbus Circle", the head of the Urkesh consulate can't safely help Jo and Henry in their investigation while in his office, but he makes do. When they first show up, he stonewalls them in his office but then meets them out front under the pretense of getting food from a truck. Later, they suspect an employee of the consulate of poisoning the late king and his wife and go there to ask for his employee record. The head of the consulate says they cannot release personal information of employees. Henry gets confrontational about it.Secretary Consulate General: I wish that I could help you... As I wish that I could help the young woman who visited earlier and claimed kinship to the king.note
Henry Morgan: Lydia...
[Henry rushes out. Jo turns to go as well.]
Secretary Consulate General: Detective.
[Jo turns back around.]
Secretary Consulate General: You forgot your newspaper.
[He indicates a newspaper on his desk, inside of which is the suspect's employee record.] - Henry asks Lucas to fetch a dagger from evidence for him. Lucas says he can't: Jo already told him Henry would ask and that if Lucas obliged, he would be fired and maybe even prosecuted. He suggests with unusual assertiveness that Henry do some paperwork that's on his desk. Henry goes to his office and finds the dagger hidden in the pile of paperwork.
- In "The King of Columbus Circle", the head of the Urkesh consulate can't safely help Jo and Henry in their investigation while in his office, but he makes do. When they first show up, he stonewalls them in his office but then meets them out front under the pretense of getting food from a truck. Later, they suspect an employee of the consulate of poisoning the late king and his wife and go there to ask for his employee record. The head of the consulate says they cannot release personal information of employees. Henry gets confrontational about it.
- Game of Thrones offers several examples:
- Tyrion Lannister is first and foremost, though his antiheroic traits cause him to straddle the line of magnificent bastardry. Nonetheless, he's one of the more heroic characters in the show and definitely fights best with his mind, with an incredible ability to charm, manipulate, bluff, and talk his way out of a bad situation. For example: laying the groundwork for Bronn to champion him a full episode before he even knew there'd be a trial by combat. He's also able to talk his way from a situation where he's likely to be murdered by hill tribesmen to getting said hill tribesmen to serve as his bodyguards.
- Robb Stark, once he begins resisting the Lannisters, is forced to fight this way. He's massively outnumbered and is forced to fight with masterful tactics. Fortunately, he is one of the best tacticians and strategists Westeros has ever seen, and he wins battle after battle (moving him into Young Conqueror territory, as well).
- Margaery Tyrell, who is something of an enigma in the novels, has much more (visible) agency in the show. Her grandmother the Queen of Thorns is the Chessmaster behind House Tyrell, visibly teaches Margaery everything she knows. Notably, she's the only person able to reign in King Joffrey with any consistency, she instantly gains the love of the common people, and when Tommen ascends the throne, it's not long before he's eating out of her hand as well. She puts on different facades when it comes to protecting her family, and is very much heroic, but her lack of the ruthlessness, and preference for using manipulation and love over violence and fear, which makes her heroic in the first place, is what gets her killed in the end.
- Arya Stark, once forced to go on the run, isn't much of a threat due to being a young girl, and is surrounded by heavily-armed and potentially-hostile adults which has fostered quick thinking on her part just to stay alive and avoid being captured by the Lannisters. She proves quite adept at using her wits to survive, such as when she uses them to force a skilled assassin to help her escape Harrenhal.
- Despite his rough, Old Soldier appearance, Davos Seaworth uses charisma, honesty, and diplomacy to bring allies to the cause of his king, such as when he brings Salladhor Saan into Stannis' service and then when he convinces the all-powerful Iron Bank of Braavos (an institution he formerly tried to rob and who have neither forgotten nor forgiven) into backing Stannis on pure nerve and implacable logic. He used to be a smuggler, an occupation that requires you to avoiding fighting as much as possible and has only once drawn his sword. His experience helps compensate for Stannis' complete lack of charisma.
- After losing his sword hand, Jaime is forced to rely on his wits and cunning to achieve his desires, such as playing on Steelshanks' sense of self-preservation to help him rescue Brienne.
- Bronn is this crossed with Action Hero. In his fight against Ser Vardis at the Eyrie, he declines a shield and constantly dodges out of Vardis' way until he's too tired to resist Bronn, who kills him. When he and Jaime are intercepted by some Dornish soldiers, he tries to avoid (or at least delay) a direct confrontation by coming up with a cover story about their being stranded. If Jaime hadn't ruined it, he might have succeeded.
- Grey Worm incites the slave revolt that topples Meereen from within.
- For six seasons, Sansa Stark was held hostage by various powerful enemies who helped kill her family, under the constant threat of death or torture, without any hope of rescue or even comfort. Then she's rescued and uses her bitter experience to become an infinitely more ruthless schemer and politician than her brother, the noble King in the North.
- The Good Place: Post Heel–Face Turn, Michael uses his intellect and subtle manipulations to save the four humans, and later, humanity as a whole. When Shawn and company come to the neighborhood to take the heroes for torture, Michael feigns allegiance to his fellow demons while dropping subtle hints in his roast so the heroes can evade capture. To seal the deal, he whispers selectively to Janet to stoke Vicki's paranoia, framing her for the humans' escape. On Earth, he appears to the other heroes as a Mentor Archetype, nudging each of them towards working together.
- Gotham: Though he is sometimes easily manipulated in the first two seasons because of his youth and the fact that he went through significant trauma, Bruce Wayne becomes better and better at using his knowledge of his enemies to outsmart them as the series goes on. Jim Gordon is sometimes written this way too, depending on the season. Lucius Fox, even though he isn't usually in a position to directly confront the villains of the show, also sometimes takes on this role when the GCPD has to deal with the Riddler because Riddler considers Lucius to be a worthy opponent.
- Methos from Highlander. An immortal at least 5,000 years old not because he's the greatest fighter, but because he is a clever and slippery Manipulative Bastard who will do almost anything to survive.
- Hogan's Heroes kept an espionage/sabotage operation going in a Luftstalag for three years.
- Dr. James Wilson of House is the only person in the series who has successfully manipulated the title character multiple times. Not only that, but he's less of an Anti-Hero than almost the entire rest of the cast. The title character is additionally a Guile Anti-Hero Manipulative Bastard.
- Kamen Rider Build: Sento Kiryu, in addition to begin a scientific genius, is a cunning chessmaster as well, frequently using his quick-thinking and guile to uncover secrets and counter the villains' machinations. Being one of these is kind of a necessity when you're going up against diabolical manipulators like Blood Stalk and Juzaburo Namba.
- Fan Xian from Joy of Life, who uses his quick wits and deception skills (as well as his knowledge as a modern person stuck in pseudo-Imperial China) to navigate court politics and take down his enemies.
- From Leverage, Leverage Consulting and Associates as a group. They're a group of top-notch thieves who teamed up to take down even worse crooks. All of them (save Parker) are fairly good at deception. Sophie Devaraux's primary skill is "Grifter," meaning she never has to use force, or stealth. She says it herself — if she's doing her job right, the mark opens the door for her and lets her take what she wants. Hardison is primarily the Techno Wizard, but he's just shy of Sophie when it comes to a con (Truth in Television: Social Engineering attacks are probably the most common way someone accesses a computer system they're not supposed to). However, Nate Ford has the title of "Mastermind" — he used to be the thieves' bane as an insurance agent, but when he went rogue, he becomes increasingly devious with his scheming. You always know the mark is screwed, but you never know quite how until Nate lays it out in the last act.
- Robert Goren from Law & Order: Criminal Intent. He knows exactly how to push people's buttons, and has manipulated many a criminal into a confession through his understanding of their psychology.
- On Law & Order: SVU, Nick Amaro is most likely to use emotional manipulation, flat-out lies, and his own personal charm to ferret out information and induce a suspect to confess. Amaro's arrival coincides with the showrunner of the aforementioned Criminal Intent, Warren Leight, taking over at SVU.
- Malcolm from Malcolm in the Middle. Showcased when Mr. Hurkabee encourages the class to cheat on an Academic Decathlon and Malcolm obliges… by giving every single team the answers to all the questions, to the point when they are blurting out the answer before the questioner even begins to ask, in an elegantly simple plan that must be seen to be appreciated.
- Or before that, when Hurkabee devised a ranking system to make the students compete with each other. When Malcolm failed to convince the others to rebel, he stopped bothering. Instead, he started over-achieving to such a degree that the others pushed themselves harder and harder to catch up, eventually culminating in a class-wide nervous breakdown that publicly humiliated the teacher.
- Younger brother Dewey evolves into this. Not as strong as Reese or clever as Malcolm, he starts as the put-upon punching bag but learns how to work the arrogant, short-tempered, and frequently distracted nature of the show's cast to his advantage.
- Maverick:
- Brett and Bart Maverick move through the west as gamblers and con men.
- Their dad outclasses them both. He was sold a gold mine the sellers knew was worthless -and convinced the sellers there was still gold in there and sold it back to them. Oh, and helped his fiance and her lover elope.
- Patrick Jane from The Mentalist turned into this after using his "powers" as a psychic got his family murdered. New CBI boss Madeline Hightower demonstrates impressive signs in her introductory episode, identifying a threat that will actually make Jane think before he acts too outrageously, then setting up a situation giving Jane the opportunity to pull off one of his stunts when normal police methods aren't working, and finally engaging in a bit of I Know You Know I Know with Jane to make him aware she let him get away with it. Jane is impressed with the new boss.
- Guinevere from Merlin is quite good at this; in lieu of any combat abilities, she would often use a blend of logic and guile to simply talk various antagonists into doing exactly what she wanted.
- NCIS Agent Tony DiNozzo, usually via Obfuscating Stupidity to make others lower their guard. A prime example is when he's being interrogated by Mossad Director Eli David, and he successfully tricks Eli into revealing his agenda in front of the very people he was playing.
- The title character of Nikita starts off her new series exemplifying this when you find out that Alex, the new recruit into Division, is a plant that Nikita trained to be recruited into Division. And all her actions at the start of the episode, an obvious attempt to capture Division's resident hacker and get access to their network was actually a Batman Gambit to convince Division that she was working with a foreign power because she couldn't get access to the network, and its intelligence, on her own.
- That's just the first episode. Listing all the other examples of her qualifications would take up a whole page.
- Henry from Once Upon a Time started the series at all of ten years old, but employs all kinds of tricks (stolen credit cards, the Living Lie Detector ability he appears to have inherited from Emma, taking advantage of his adopted mother's absences) in order to try and fight off the curse he's realized is affecting the town. Since that town is populated by exiled Fairy Tale characters, he also employs near-weaponized levels of Genre Savvy to spin things his direction (though he wound up being Wrong Genre Savvy when Peter Pan showed up). It tends to run in the family. His paternal grandfather is the first-rate Magnificent Bastard Rumplestiltskin, but he has the moral compass of his maternal grandfather, Prince Charming.
- Del from Only Fools and Horses occasionally demonstrated enough savvy to come out on top after a whole episode of apparent failures.
- Captain Mercer of The Orville. He's a physically average man in command of a Fragile Speedster, forcing him to rely on his wits against enemies with greater brute strength.
- Harold Finch of Person of Interest manipulates information, finances, and people themselves to save lives and bring 'untouchable' villains to justice. Though he doesn't seem to like, and will avoid, manipulating good people, he will occasionally if it is the most expedient way to save a life.
- Michael Scofield of Prison Break uses long term plans and quick on-the-stop thinking to save his brother from a death sentence.
- Psych was doing this before the Mentalist with the protagonist Shawn Spencer. Posing as a "psychic detective," he uses nothing more but his sublime deduction skills from a childhood of intense training from his father along with eidetic memory (inherited from his mother) to charm people, catch bad guys and solve cases.
- Even when he is acting goofy, there is some level of this. His goofy demeanor and tendency to show-off means a lot of criminals, especially those who pride themselves on their cleverness, underestimate him only to get hoodwinked and caught.
- Betty Cooper of Riverdale can be very underhanded and manipulative in her quests to do what she thinks is right, even toeing the line of Villain Protagonist.
- Scandal (2012): Olivia personifies this trope. In the pilot episode, when she wants Amanda to leave town, all it takes is a two-minute conversation in which Olivia describes every way she can ruin Amanda's life.
- Sherlock:
- The title character, most of his fights are won through pure observation and intelligence.
- His brother Mycroft, as it comes with the territory of being a Knowledge Broker and The Spymaster.
- Richard Woolsey of Stargate Atlantis becomes this when he takes command of the city. There's an episode where he saves the day with lawyering, manipulation, and a little bribery.
- Benjamin Sisko on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has to be more cunning than most Starfleet captains, placed as he is in a post where he's as much a local political figure as he is a military commander. He's excellent at manipulating his adversaries and finding chinks in their armor (literal or metaphorical) to exploit.
- Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation is no slouch either. Watch "The Ensigns of Command" — after exploiting a loophole in the Treaty of Armens, a document which is half-a-million words long, he puts the Sheliak ON HOLD.
- In "The Drumhead", after a witch-trial occurs on the Enterprise and leads to Picard eventually being brought to trial himself, he calmly begins by making an opening statement that quotes the father of the prosecutor, Norah Satie, about suppressing individuals' freedom. This causes her to begin an angry tirade that causes the head of Starfleet Intelligence to walk out in utter disgust.
- In "Peak Performance", Riker gives Worf a tactical scenario; "You're outmanned, you're outgunned, you're outequipped. What else have you got?" Worf gives a one-word answer: "Guile."
- And of course the precursor, James T. Kirk of Star Trek: The Original Series is the first guile hero. Sure he'd throw fists and judo chops when required, but his greatest skill was his ability at subterfuge. From lying about his ship's capability multiple times to disguising himself as the enemy or pretending to know things he had no way of knowing just to throw his opponent off. Kirk owed much of his success to his enemies' inability to tell if somebody is lying.
- Captain Pike of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds often disarms his opponents with his charm and affability then manipulates the situation to get what he wants. In once case, he was captured by pirates and went full Poisonous Captive, cheerfully turning the pirates on each other until there was a full blown, violent mutiny that allowed him to commandeer the pirate ship.
- The "under the radar" winner archetype from Survivor, who lets their Smug Snake accomplices do the major strategizing and take the heat for it, while banking on a superior social game to win the jury over in the end. Subverted with Natalie White from "Samoa", who was not pure dead weight strategy-wise (the Erik Cardona blindside) and adopted a less aggressive approach for pragmatic reasons, having wisely deduced that a female power-player would be nothing more than a walking target in that particular environment, instead just letting her Smug Snake partner dig his own grave.
- Denise from Philippines is another example; while more proactive than Natalie, Malcolm ended up taking most of the credit as the Magnificent Bastard. At the Final Tribal Council, she was specifically called out on using her skills as a therapist to build relationships and win people over.
- The title character of Veronica Mars relies on smooth talking, wit, and calling on favors from her many allies to successfully carry out her detective work. She's outsmarted the police department on several occasions.
- The West Wing has a couple examples:
- C.J. is only the White House Press Secretary, so she has no actual written power as far as policy-making within the executive branch of the United States government. Yet her PR acumen and smart use of words allows her to play political opponents like two-dollar banjos semi-regularly, such as with the inquiry into President Bartlet's scandal involving his hiding of his MS diagnosis being done by a hostile Republican Congress — initially it was done with a truly independent third-party counsel, but C.J. starts making comments during briefings that suggested the White House was almost eager to cooperate with the investigation until the House Republicans get fed up and take over the investigation with their own people, which gets the American public to see it as a partisan attack and thus gain the Bartlet administration some sympathy points.
- Matt Santos, as a Democratic Congressman from Texas, manages to outsmart the Republican Speaker of the House by hiding in one of the Capitol's side rooms while pretending he and a bunch of other Democratic Congressmen went home for break in order to lure him into putting a bill the Democrats don't like up for a vote, then coming in before the vote can be rescinded and all of them voting the bill down (with their added presence meaning the vote is binding due to making quorum).
- Artemus Gordon of The Wild Wild West, who believes that "when you cannot confound the enemy, then you have lost to him."
- Gabrielle of Xena: Warrior Princess was very good at doing this, given that she had aspirations of becoming a bard, which set her apart from the brute force of Xena. In the first episode of the series, she outwitted a cyclops and escaped from him.
