Warning: Be wary of spoilers. On this page, titles alone can (and will) be Walking Spoilers.
Kansas City Shuffles in Fan Works.
Crossovers
- Aeon Entelechy Evangelion:
- Various agencies and factions take advantage of everyone's attention being focused on Mot and the AWS it generates to make their own moves, engaging in both the Secret War and open warfare.
- Rei acts as a decoy for Mot in Unit-00, accompanied by lots of sports cars.
- In Aeon Natum Engel, Operation CATO is nothing but a cover being run to distract from their plans to capture the Herald.
- Boldores And Boomsticks: Discussed; Koga explains to Ruby that Highly-Visible Ninja are not only good at intimidating those who don't know any better, they also get those who do to underestimate them... and they can serve as a good distraction for shinobi who are working undercover. As he describes it, if the guards are busy fighting off a team of ninja at the gates, they're unlikely to notice that the cook that was hired last month is quietly slipping away with the vial of poison he's just used to kill their lord.
- During the second book of Child of the Storm, Harry and his friends are trying to rescue Carol from Dracula. However, the villain of the piece has already creamed Harry and his allies in a straight fight. So instead, Harry borrows power from Jean and Maddie to pretend to be the Dark Phoenix, destroying his castle and leaving him paralyzed with fear. Dracula figures it out after a few minutes...but doesn't realize until too late that Jean-Paul has evacuated her and the Avengers are on the way.
- Crosswinds of Fate: The Fate cast present the wizards with a magic circle that can grant magic to muggles for a limited amount of time, using Filch as an example. They do this in order to trick them into believing this is where Saber's superhuman abilities come from. Nearly all of the wizards fall for this, save Umbridge, who is ironically Too Dumb to Fool.
- During the Rating Game between Rias and Riser in Hero Academia D×D, Yuuto sets up an obvious trap that Riser's pawns trigger and easily get rid of only to then end up triggering another trap that leaves them completely defenseless.
- Platinum Pirate: Crocodile pulls this off as part of his Failure Gambit: right after the war, a guard accidentally uses Vivi's Baroque Works code name in front of Lucas and Cobra and reveals himself as the Shapeshifting Mr. 2, whom the other guards carry off. It isn't until the victory feast that, overwhelmed by the sense of celebration, "Cobra" drops his Clone-Clone disguise and reveals himself to be the actual Mr. 2. And by the time that happens, the rest of Baroque Works has already escaped the island.
- In The (Questionable) Burdens of Leadership of a Troll Emperor
many of the more skeptical politicians (and people in general) on Earth think Naruto is using his obvious fun loving party boy demeanor to convince the world he's harmless so he can take over the world. In reality, his antics are to keep everyone from realizing his wife Xanna is already taking over Africa which they use as a foothold to take over the rest of the world, albeit mostly nonviolently. - Saito refers to it as a shell game in Soldier of Zero when he realizes that none of the attackers he's facing is the real one. Though he doesn't realize that Wardes is the real attacker.
- A Shield of Man sees Jon and Natasha pull this off on the Vulture King, making him think that the decoy wagon is the one that holds the payment to the Iron Bank while the ship with the payment is a trap. In reality Jon got Tywin to delay the payment by a day and he, along with the Spiders, hid in the decoy.
- Star Wars vs. Warhammer 40K: When Davik Thune's fleet starts to orbitally bombard Raxus Secundus, no effort is made to prevent the planet's outgoing distress calls from reaching General Grievous. Grievous believes that the Imperials attacking Raxus want him to hear the planet's cries for help to bait his forces into recklessly charging in to save as many people as they can from their besieged world, thereby leaving themselves exposed to an Imperial ambush; he himself had used similar tactics during one of his prior military campaigns against the Republic. So rather than make a disorganized beeline for Raxus, he instead gathers all his ships at a neighboring system before entering the battle with an organized fleet formation, seemingly catching the Imperials, who Grievous assumed were expecting incoming Separatist reinforcements to be too panicked to think tactically, off guard. After his counter-strategy succeeds in driving away Thune's fleet, Grievous, needing more information about his new enemy, boards a disabled cruiser left behind by the retreating Imperials... only to get Lured into a Trap. It turns out that the whole thing was just a ploy to assassinate Grievous by tricking him into coming aboard a ship rigged to explode, killing the droid general and wiping out a good chunk of the Separatist fleet in the blast.
- Lightning Only Strikes Once: When Clarke and Lexa attack the Mountain, Clarke gets captured; however, this was actually part of their plan. Not only did she factor in how long a tranq dart's effects last, she convinces them that she has a suitcase nuke armed and ready to blow.
- In By the Horns, the Taurians 'covertly' transfer military forces into the area surrounding a university, in order to make it appear that they're protecting it and the Data Core that is supposedly inside. In reality, the Data Core is hidden inside an underground base that was considered to be a massive waste of resources back when it was first made. In fact, the base sat unused until now because its construction bankrupted the family that built it.
- In Part of the Night, Bruce pulls one on Bane to protect his armory. He lets Bane think he had his Applied Sciences toys taken out of Wayne Enterprises and sunk at sea, but the containers that sunk were completely empty and the real ones were moved to near Bruce's temporary Batcave, allowing Bruce to retrieve them for the final confrontation with Bane.
- In Fever Dreams: 1) L knows Light is planning something to derail his investigation and it's clearly all going according to plan 2) Light is counting on L to make this assumption in order to stay close to him. 3) L is now wrong about what Light's ultimate goal is: L is waiting for Light to murder him or try to murder him. L thinks he can can defeat Light either by finding the evidence before Light can kill him or if he does kill him that can be used as evidence against him. Light is no longer trying to kill him...
- In But Doctor, I Am Pagliacci, Jack (the former Joker) proves that Sanity Has Advantages by pulling a beautiful one off on the Justice League. Superman (now evil) knows that Jack's goal is to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, so Jack uses the threat of time-travel as a distraction (as he's already realized that he can't do anything before removing Superman as a threat), sending allies to steal various time-travel devices. This distracts the Justice League from his real goal- stealing the Eradicator AI from the Fortress of Solitude, and keeps them barking up the wrong tree for a while while Jack puts his subsequent plans into action.
- In Deliveries, Rufus Shinra and Godo Kisaragi are holding a tea ceremony, to be broadcast live as a publicity stunt. Yuffie is none too happy about this, and tries to sabotage the ceremony by stealing the special tea leaves while they're being transported. One wild goose chase with Cloud and the Turks later, she appears to succeed... until the Turks are informed that their mission was a success. Godo anticipated Yuffie's interference, and quietly held a ceremony with Rufus some time in advance. That ceremony was recorded and scheduled to be aired as 'live', making Yuffie strike at the wrong people at the wrong time.
- Natural Selection: During the invasion of Osaka, Satsuki sees four copies of Nui running around and assumes she's running a Shell Game with her copies while the real Nui is disguised and taking a different path to sneak in. However, Nui is actually among the copies — her real plan here is to break Satsuki's will by forcing her to fight Ira, who was mutated and driven mad by the Life Fibers Nui sewed into him.
- A Match Made In Hell: Satan allows Oberon to banish him and his demons. Not only does this trick Oberon into believing they aren't a threat, this enables them to avoid being incapacitated by the same attack that takes out most of the magic-powered guests. He also sends his minions to Avalon while Oberon is distracted, carting all of Oberon's children off to Hell.
- The Karma of Lies: After Hawkmoth is exposed and arrested, Lila makes a deal with Adrien: if he provides her with the money she needs to afford a better security system for her family, she'll confess her Con Artist ways to their class and apologize for everything. Adrien warns her that if she doesn't keep up her end of the deal, he'll go straight to the police. Unfortunately for him, that's exactly what she wants; Lila's been busily pulling other strings behind the scenes to make it look like he was secretly working with his villainous father. And since Adrien refused to do anything about her before, coming forward after she's double-crossed him will make it appear that he's desperately trying to throw an innocent girl under the bus, rather than telling the truth.
- Cheat Code: Support Strategist:
- Hitoshi starts masking the way his Quirk activates by doing a variety of other, random things before using it, such as holding eye contact for an extended period of time or touching his target. This is meant to distract people; while trying to avoid the fake activation conditions, they'll stumble into the real one of replying to him.
- Izuku kicks off the Cavalry Battle by having Ochako use Zero Gravity on the 10-million-point headband, then Hitoshi chucks it into the air. This distracts many of their opponents into fighting over it while his team goes around stealing low-scoring headbands. What's more, Mei had secretly put microexplosives into the 10-million-point headband, which she activates two minutes before the exercise ends.
- Entropy: The Fate of the Hero System: Operations Cavalry and Bletchley form one. The former is a full-on frontal attack against the USJ on the 10th anniversary of the Hell Class' USJ attack, while the latter is a cyberattack on UA that aims to expose more corruption in the hero society to galvanize support for the Fallen Heroes Alliance's cause, allowing them to move ahead with Stage 2 of their long-term plans faster than originally intended.
- Operation Bletchley itself counts as one. Technocrat will try to hack into UA, drawing Nezu's attention, and while Nezu is dealing with that, Skinjacker will attempt to infect UA's systems with a virus allowing the Alliance full access to UA files.
- Green Tea Rescue: When the League attacks the USJ, Thirteen tells Kaminari that they're going to distract the villains while he sneaks out and calls for support. Or at least, that was what Kurogiri assumed their plan was; in reality, Kaminari was acting as a distraction for Hagakure to sneak out with his headset.
- My False Love Academia: During the Internship arc, Tomura sets up an elaborate plan. The first phase, wide-scale rioting, is simply a distraction so they can attempt to assassinate several of the Top-Ten Heroes. And that's a distraction as well: their true targets are several buildings that were left unprotected, attempting to shake faith in Pro Heroes by showing how they aren't infallible, as well as accusing them as prioritizing their own over innocent civilians.
- One for All and Eight for the Ninth:
- Izuku and Momo pull off a double-layered one during the Heroes vs. Villains exercise. When Tokoyami and Itsuka arrive, they find their opponents guarding three bombs. All three are actually fakes, as are the three in the adjoining room; the real target was hidden behind a fake wall.
- In order to obscure the fact that his Quirk is One for All, as well as the fact that it contains multiple powers, Izuku calls it 'Decade Force', implying that it grants him ten special abilities. This tricks people into trying to guess what his unknown powers are while he can pass off the various abilities he'll be gaining over time as part of it.
- At the start of the Cavalry Battle, Izuku's team removes the ten million point headband and sends a quartet of Mei's drones all over the arena. None of the drones are actually carrying the headband though; it's suspended in midair thanks to Ochako.
- An ordinary life: In order to get around Fat Gum's Kev Lard, Akari blasts him with her Solar Beam, forcing him to absorb the attack and cast out its kinetic energy with Fat Counter... which also strips him of his armor, enabling Kishun to land a headshot while he's vulnerable.
- Viridian: The Green Guide:
- While fleeing Eraserhead, Izuku reaches a point with two possible escape paths. When Aizawa arrives, he hears a marble bouncing around and promptly goes the other way, assuming the marble was meant to distract him down the wrong way. Izuku actually went down the path he dropped the marble on.
- Izuku and Aizawa manage to trick All For One this way. Knowing he's listening to them through a camera, they discuss the idea of tricking him into stealing Aizawa's Quirk in hopes of it erasing all his other abilities. All For One taunts them, then does what they actually hoped he'd do: attempt to steal Izuku's nonexistent Quirk.
- Androgyninja's A Drop of Poison:
- After Raiga traps Kakashi, Sakura uses henge to disguise herself as her teacher. Raiga insists that he won't be fooled, but is drawn into arguing with her about it, distracting him from how Sasuke throws a disguised Naruto into position to ambush him.
- Sakura sets up several traps in the Forest of Death, then tricks Zaku into stepping into one by disguising herself as Orochimaru. However, the real trap triggers when Zaku frees himself, as this also frees a log covered with explosive tags to swing down towards him. He's unable to get out of the way in time.
- Blackkat's Reverse: While pursuing Kurama's group, the Freak Squad finds two sets of footprints leading in different directions. Unable to discern which is real, they decide to split up and follow both... but in reality, both trails were false, enabling Kurama and his kids to head for their actual destination after the Freak Squad has left.
- Naruto's trickier traps in A Drop of Poison cause someone to notice one "trap" and avoid it, triggering the real trap. Examples include a step that makes a click when stepped on with quick drying glue in the spot someone is most likely to jump towards to avoid the "trap", and several "explosive tags" that are actually just random marks on a piece of chakra charged paper which are spotted then maneuvered around right into actual traps.
- Averted in Escape From The Hokage's Hat; Ao and Mei mistakenly believe that Tsunade is running one of these against all the Elemental Countries, when in reality she's just flying by the seat of her pants after opting to stick it to the Council.
- In One Eye Full Of Wisdom, a large part of nearly every fight is trying (and often failing) to figure out what an opponent's bluff is.
- Since Zabuza isn't sure whether the Tazuna at the bridge or at his house is the real one, he goes after one and sends Haku after the other. Turns out the real Tazuna was back at Konoha.
- Tenten is too afraid to go into melee with Sakura because that's Sakura's specialty, but also afraid to stay at ranged because the girl looks so confident. She learns too late that "Sakura" is actually a summons under henge and the real Sakura is laying a trap beneath her feet.
- Sasuke engages Kankuro in taijutsu until he hears a wooden creak from him, causing Sasuke to realize he's fighting Kankuro's puppet. Sasuke holds a knife to the bundle hiding Kankuro, only for it to launch several kunai at him as Kankuro had hidden pieces of wood in his outfit to make Sasuke think he was a puppet.
- Soundbite from This Bites! ate the Noise-Noise Fruit, which lets him throw and manipulate his voice to superhuman levels. During a long battle against the Unluckies, Cross and Soundbite hide in one of the two bathrooms in a local bar. As Miss Friday is trying to guess where they're hiding, Soundbite loudly sneezes. Miss Friday then opens fire on the other bathroom, giving Cross time to escape. As Soundbite guessed, the Unluckies learned by then to stop trusting their ears when fighting Soundbite. So when Soundbite made the obvious sound in their hiding spot, Miss Friday assumed he was trying to misdirect her and would be in the room where there wasn't a noise.
- Brave New World: Maelstrom uses this with a three-pronged assault. First, it throws airships, followed by a sweeping shadow aura. The heroes are tricked into thinking that both of these moves are the 'main' attack; in reality, the real attack comes after they've been weakened and distracted by the first two waves.
- In Common Sense, Jessie and James lure Ash and his friends into chasing them by stealing a cartload of Pokémon from Pokémon Tech. Once cornered, they give them up, then distract Ash further by reminiscing about their past encounters. Then Meowth calls, letting them know that he'd finished his raid on the rest of Pokémon Tech, revealing the ruse.
- "Forever Yellow" sees various Yellow Rangers join forces to stop a version of Venjix manifesting in the main universe, which culminates in a final confrontation with Venjix using a massive robot body which is defeated using a relatively straightforward shuffle. While some of the assembled Yellow Rangers confront Venjix using the Isis Megazord- the Falcon, Giraffe, Deer, Rhino and Armadillo zords choosing Taylor, Maya, Summer, Tanya and Z to use them for this one battle- another group of Yellows- Ronny, Katie, Trini- use the Hovertek cycle and an EPM device designed by Andrew Hartford to sneak up on Venjix's body from behind, plant the device inside it, and then escape while it's busy fighting the Isis Megazord.
- Arc Corp: When taking calls from members of the Vale anomalous community who are reporting what they know about members of an anomalous terrorist cell who are attempting to fight ARC Corp, one of said members calls Blake directly with the promise of rating out the entire group. Jaune and Blake know that it's an ambush, but play along knowing it'll be the quickest way to take out the most zealous members of the organization. However, it turns out that the meeting was being organized by the White Fang faunus terrorist group, specifically the Albain Brothers. Instead of trying to kill or take Blake hostage, they successfully force the Containments Office into a Mexican Standoff scenario where the duo have to allow said terrorist cell to merge with the White Fang and build a community on Menagerie, lest the White Fang immediately expose everything that's been going on to the rest of ARC Corp (which would result in the swift death of all parties — the peaceful anomalies of Vale, both terrorist groups, Blake, and Jaune).
- In A Dragon's Roar, this is how Rhaella kills Varys. She has Ser Alliser Thorne tell the Master of Whispers that she intends to escape King's Landing after Rhaegar's death, making Varys think Thorne will work for him as he moves to capture the Queen Dowager — only for Thorne to deal with Varys' minions while Rhaella stabs him in the throat.
- A Darker Path: Atropos poisons a bottle of alcohol in Kaiser's stash, and sets all the clocks at Medhall HQ to 15 minutes later, so that when the Empire finds the poison after "midnight" and thinks that was her attack, they are completely distracted and not keeping an eye on Kaiser. Furthermore, since they're relaxing, Kaiser has just taken off his helmet. Moments later, he has a sword through his eye.
