Warning: Be wary of spoilers. On this page, titles alone can (and will) be Walking Spoilers.
Kansas City Shuffles in Anime and Manga.
- Assassination Classroom: During Class 3-E's island assassination attempt, Koro-sensei uses his keen sense of smell to deduce that Chiba and Hayami, the class' best snipers, plan to deliver the killing blow from a nearby mountain. What he detected were dummies set up by the students to lure his attention away from the snipers' true hiding spot underneath the ocean.
- Bungo Stray Dogs: Done to horrifying effect by Fyodor. He instigates a war between the Port Mafia and the ADA by getting both their leaders infected by a virus which will kill them both if one does not die within forty-eight hours. Instead of attacking the mafia as Fyodor wanted, Ranpo uses his Ultra Deduction to come up with another way out, discovering the Ability user responsible for the virus in Suribachi City. Atsushi and Kunikida go to the man's hideout to force him to remove the virus, only for the confrontation to go horrifically wrong, culminating in a young girl killing herself in front of Kunikida. When they finally catch the culprit, he turns out to be a Red Herring planted by Fyodor, who predicted what Ranpo would do and planned everything out to break the ADA members emotionally.
- Early in Code Geass season 2, Lelouch pulls one on Rolo starting off as a Scheherezade Gambit after Rolo has cornered him with a gun to the head. Lelouch offers to bring Rolo CC. Rolo of course assumes that Lelouch is just trying to con Rolo into letting Lelouch escape, but given that Rolo has the power to stop time he plays along, figuring he can kill CC and Lelouch when they try to double-cross him. Lelouch instead engineers a situation (as part of Xanatos Gambit) in which he saves Rolo's life and then to top it off gives CC to him, knowing that Rolo's desire for family will cause him to have a Heel–Face Turn if he believes Lelouch actually cares about him.
- It actually becomes a major plot point later, because the con was SO effective, that even when Lelouch explicitly told Rolo everything he said was lies, Rolo doesn't actually believe him and winds up sacrificing himself to allow Lelouch to escape.
- His father does the same. As far as everyone knows, he's ruling The Empire and setting up to Take Over the World. No one knows about the Ragnarok Connection he's cooking up behind the scene as no one has any idea that's his true goal. Lelouch had five minutes to come up with a counter to it.
- Death Note: Testing the thirteen-day rule: 1) L suspects that Light and Misa are plotting to kill him. 2) L believes that he can expose them first if he tests the notebook and disproves the thirteen-day rule. 3) L declares his intentions to test the notebook... and is promptly killed by Rem. Light was never actually planning to kill L himself, because he knew that if he let L drive him into a corner, Rem would be forced to intervene to protect Misa.
- In Episode 8 of The Heroic Legend of Arslan, Narsus pulls off a textbook example. He sends a peasant to Kharlan's camp, claiming that he was attacked by the heroes and saw them head south. Kharlan tells his troops to head north, into unfavorable terrain, believing that he has seen through Narsus' plot to lure him south. As it turns out, this is part of Narsus' plan to capture Kharlan.
- In Hunter × Hunter, a minor villain challenges Gon to a "simple" contest: he presents two candles, a long one and a short one, and allows Gon to pick one. Whoever's candle burns out first is the loser, and as other characters point out, it's obvious that there's a trick, but impossible to tell whether the longer candle has been tampered with, or if the lopsided choice is meant to trick Gon into falsely suspecting that it has. It turns out that the villain just has a second pair of candles down the back of his shirt and switches them out so he gives Gon an oil-soaked candle whichever he picks.
- In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders, Jotaro uses a set of magnets to trick DIO into thinking he can move while DIO has stopped time. DIO laughs at having figured out the trick so easily... except Jotaro really could move freely all along, and was trying to get DIO's guard down by making him think it was only a trick. By the time DIO figures this out, Jotaro has already put a fist through DIO's torso. DIO outright lampshades it.DIO: "The magnet wasn't there to make me think he could move... but to trick me into thinking he couldn't, thus luring me closer!"
- Kaiji:
- Kaiji defeats Ohtsuki in Underground Chinchirorin by engaging him in a psychological duel, where the crucial component is making him believe he has seen through Kaiji's ploy.
- The Bog arc contains a masterful example. Shortly after Kaiji and Sakazaki blow most of their money trying to win the jackpot on a heavily rigged pachinko machine, Sakazaki comes back to try again, but quickly grows frustrated and starts smashing up the machine. Ichijou, the casino manager, assumes this must be a distraction and heads to his office to find Kaiji trying to break into the vault. He laughs at the futile attempt to trick him, subjects Kaiji to some light Fingore as punishment... and doesn't realise their true goal was to sabotage the machine during its repairs until it's already too late.
- This is pretty much how any round of Liar Game works.
- Round 1, Akiyama makes the teacher believe that they are trying to get him away from the safe. In reality he is trying to get the teacher away from receiving info on when the money would be checked.
- Round 2, Akiyama makes Fukunaga think that he is trying to get the three guys to fight over the money prize, and they think that they can beat him by tying the round and continuing negotiations later on. In reality, Akiyama had recruited the third guy and was getting them to think of tying.
- Round 3, Yokoya knows that Akiyama has infiltrated several moles in his country and thinks he can beat the con by reconverting them. He is wrong about the number of moles that have infiltrated. In the same round, Akiyama believes that Yokoya is trying to get their team to lose at a profit. In reality, Yokoya was just trying to run as much funds as he could through his account.
- Round 4, both Yokoya and Harimoto think that Akiyama is trying to dominate the chairs game, when in fact he was trying to lay his hands on the winning medals.
- Revival Round 3, Harimoto and his followers think Nao is trying to trick them into thinking Kimura is a spy. Her actual goal was to confirm Akiyama's hypothesis that Kimura is the real cult leader.
- Final Round, Yokoya thinks Akiyama is trying to get Wei to win, then use Yokoya's obsession with defeating Akiyama to force him to save the other players. Instead, Akiyama allows Yokoya to remove Wo and Wei from the game, then manipulates Wu and Shu into a deadlock that forces the dealers to end the Liar Game altogether.
- Frequently used in Naruto:
- During the Land of Waves arc, Sasuke uses the shadow shuriken technique, which involves aiming a shuriken at the enemy, with another shuriken hiding in its shadow. His enemy, Zabuza, sees through this and dodges both shuriken. It turns out he used the shadow shuriken just to distract Zabuza from the actual plan, which was Naruto had transformed into the shadow shuriken.
- In the same arc, during his fight against Temari, Shikamaru throws his kunai-laden jacket into the air. Temari (and Shikamaru's teacher Asuma) assumes this is to draw her attention away from the ground so that he can trap her with the Shadow Imitation technique. His actual goal was to force her into a position from where he can make use of a hole in the ground dug earlier by Naruto to increase the range of his technique.
- And later during the Sasuke Recovery Mission Arc, the Sound Four place an obvious wire trap that Naruto steps over but just before he puts his foot down Shikamaru spots a second almost invisible wire and stops Naruto from stepping on it. Later when they catch up to the Sound Four it turns out that the Sound Four detected them coming and Shikamaru realizes that there was actually a third wire that was totally invisible.
- During the Pain's Invasion of Konoha arc, Naruto uses smoke bombs and then sends a Rasenshuriken at Pain's Preta Path through the smoke. The Preta Path, which has the ability to absorb any ninjutsu, absorbs the Rasenshuriken. However, the Rasenshuriken was actually Naruto's transformation jutsu. Since the transformation jutsu gets absorbed, Naruto returns to his original form, and physically holds down the Preta Path. It turns out that this trick was not his actual target, it was a distraction to prevent Pain from noticing a couple of Naruto shadow clones flying with a giant Rasengan each aiming for the Naraka Path.
- In one of the fillers for the 4th Shinobi War, a group of Redshirts are fleeing from an Edo Tensei zombie who just wiped out their squad. While fleeing, they place some obvious traps along the way. What a bunch of cowards, right? It turns out they were using those to get Ringo to let her guard down so they could lure her into quicksand as revenge. As is usual for Naruto, the audience didn't see it coming, and thought the Redshirt leader was a legit coward.
- In Negima! Magister Negi Magi, Negi pulls one off in his fight against Rakan. He blitzes him with superspeed and while Rakan can't keep up with Negi hitting him from every angle at the speed of lightning, he can't get through Rakan's defenses. However, at this time he also sets up a spell circle around the two of them by using his attacks as a disguise since Rakan can't actually keep track of what he's doing anyway. After that he challenges Rakan to a show of strength and while Rakan assumes Negi will either throw a lightning spear at him or nullify Rakan's attack with Asuna's sword, he actually does nothing but activate the spell circle he'd set up beforehand so he could absorb the attack and increase his offenses enough to actually hurt Rakan.
- In one episode of Pokémon: The Series, Ash and the gang discover a plate of delicious-looking fruit sitting in the middle of the road. Ash starts for it, but Misty points out that it's clearly a trap by Team Rocket, and besides, there are perfectly safe fruit trees to the side of the road anyway. They go to the trees, laughing at how dumb Team Rocket was to try to trick them that way... only to fall into the trap Team Rocket set in front of the trees.
- Slayers: Xellos has relied on Lina distrusting him to betray her, letting her concerns with how he'll double-cross her cover up how he'll double-cross her.
- In the Touhou Project print work, Silent Sinner in Blue, Yukari pulls off a spectacular Kansas City Shuffle to stump Eirin and the Watatsukis. Specifically, she manipulates Remilia into invading the moon with a highly visible rocket. Eirin warns the Watatsukis about this, while also warning them that Yukari herself was going to try to infiltrate the moon using that as a cover, believing that was Yukari's plan. Eirin is correct in figuring out Yukari's actions- but it turns out that Yukari herself was a decoy for the real thief, Yuyuko, to infiltrate the moon and steal a treasure.
