Out Gambitted / Live-Action TV

• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: In the second season, Raina threatens to expose Jemma Simmons (who is currently undercover at HYDRA) in order to blackmail Coulson into helping her. Coulson just smiles and lets her go through with it, to Raina's consternation, as she knows that Coulson is A Father to His Men. She didn't know that Coulson had another mole in HYDRA — Bobbi Morse, who had gotten a job as chief of security for that base, and was thus in a perfect position to extract Simmons when things went south.
• Captain Dylan Hunt of the Andromeda has a knack for pulling this off, especially when dealing with the Nietscheans. The episode "Double Helix" in Season 1 features multiple layers of outsmarting each other.
• Astrid: In "Invisible", one of Astrid's coworkers at Criminal Records knocks a can of toothpicks on the ground in front of her and asks if she can count them (a Shout-Out to a scene in Rain Man: Astrid is autistic). She says she can't, but then tells him that it's possible to make four equilateral triangles with just six toothpicks, and then walks off. He's shown later to have spent practically the whole day working on it.
• In Cheers Sam is often out-gambitted by rival bar owner Gary in the "Bar Wars" episodes. Other times it's the snooty owner of the restaurant upstairs, "Melville's".
• The perps in Columbo usually think that their plans are pretty damn foolproof, actually, and that this shabby little detective has no chance of uncovering them. Unfortunately for them, Columbo has a tendency to prove them very wrong with his own cunning plans.
• Criminal Minds:
  • In the fourth season episode "Masterpiece", Jason Alexander plays a serial killer who confesses to Agent Rossi that he's committed seven murders and is about to kill five more people, unless the BAU can find where he's hidden his victims. He does this as a massive Take That! to Rossi himself, who caught his serial-killer brother and watched as he was executed. It does not end well for him — Rossi lets him believe he's won, confess his entire scheme, and then reveals he's recorded the entire thing. And his team is fine, thank you very much, he knew the place was booby-trapped. This is why one does not threaten Rossi's "family".
  • In the episode "Lessons Learned", Gideon tricks a terror suspect by altering his sense of time. Done more cleverly than most as he doesn't use a clock. Over a 48 hour period he slightly alters the man's prayer times. At the end they convince him the attack has already happened and get him to reveal the real target in time.
• The Devil Judge: Sun-ah manipulates Ga-on into getting Yo-han arrested. But Yo-han guessed something like this would happen and already made plans to deal with it. He made sure he had blackmail material on the prison warden and used it to get out of prison.
• Doctor Who:
  • Any time that someone tries to play the Daleks or Cybermen for personal gain. In those cases they usually forget that the races in question have very straight-forward goals (exterminate everything and assimilate everything, respectively), and so are not as vulnerable to convoluted maneuvering from anyone who isn't the Doctor.
  • Inverted in "The Five Doctors", where the Master, knowing that the Cybermen will kill him once he has outlived his usefulness, leads them all into a death trap once they have outlived theirs.
  • The Curse of Fatal Death, a parody special starring Rowan Atkinson as the Doctor, takes this trope to new, ridiculous heights, involving among other things the Doctor and the Master's duelling bribery of an architect regarding sewer placement, which leads to the Master spending a very long time climbing out of said sewer.
  • "Bad Wolf"/"The Parting of the Ways": The Daleks have, for centuries, been manipulating the people of Earth to turn the planet into a Crapsack World with no one the wiser... and then the Controller of the Gamestation uses their own system to bring in the Doctor, knowing he'll destroy them.
  • "Last of the Time Lords": The Master is subjected to this by the Doctor and Martha. Let's just say that his inability to resist dramatic countdowns is something the Doctor was counting on...
  • "The Sontaran Stratagem"/"The Poison Sky": As part of their plan, the Sontarans pull a Capture and Replicate on Martha, now a member of UNIT with a high security clearance, with the clone tasked with preventing UNIT from launching nuclear warheads at the Sontaran ship. It turns out that the Doctor, who caught on to Evil Martha the moment he met her in person, is fine with this as he doesn't want Earth starting an interstellar war.
  • "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End": In order to try and stop Davros and the Daleks from destroying reality, several of the good guys have access to some devastating weapons: UNIT's Earth-destroying Osterhagen Key, controlled by Martha, and Sarah Jane's Warpstar pendant. When they and their allies manage to get into position to use these items, they call up the villains to threaten them to back off... only to be teleported to Davros' vault. Then Donna and the Doctor clone arrive with their Dalek-destroying weapon... only for it to be destroyed. It's the Darkest Hour for everyone before the element that will really save the day, unforeseen by almost everyone, comes to light.
  • "The End of Time":
    • The Master prepared for the possibility of his death before the series 3 finale, but his plan gets derailed when his widow reveals she's been making plans of her own. Not enough to stop him entirely, but it kind of ruins the man's day.
    • The Master summons Rassilon, Lord President of the Time Lords, in a gambit to resurrect the Time Lords and turn them all into copies of himself. One hand motion by Rassilon and the smile is wiped off of the Master's face (not that Rassilon was ready for the Doctor and the Master's combined opposition).
  • "A Good Man Goes to War" puts the Doctor on the receiving end. His Army of The Ages manages to rescue Amy Pond and her baby. Except the baby, the villains' real target has been swapped out with a Doppelgänger and the real one is still with their leader.
• Game of Thrones: Constantly. Almost every time someone engages in intrigue, or even a conversation. That's when things don't turn into a Gambit Pileup.
• Many examples from House.
  • Happens to Cuddy again and again every time she tries to play House.
    (in response to her switching his painkillers with laxatives) I know when my Vicodin isn't Vicodin. Do you know when your birth control pills aren't birth control pills?
  • Wilson is the only one who ever really matches House, in fact he pulls off one of these himself in "Safe" where House plays a series of practical jokes on him in the hopes of getting him to respond. Wilson stoically takes it all without complaint and House seems to give up, then at the very end of the episode House's cane snaps in two and he falls flat on his ass. Wilson deadpans that "someone" must have sawn halfway through his cane during the night.
    You magnificent bitch. You just invoked the name of your dead girlfriend to play me? You're my hero. (From "Saviors", when House finally realizes Wilson's been screwing with him the entire episode.)
  • In another episode, both House and the audience are led to believe that the pranks are being played first by Foreman and his ex-con brother, in a bonding ritual, and then by Lucas, in an effort to force House and Wilson out of Cuddy's dream home. At the very end of the episode, after House declines to get revenge on whom he thinks is the prankster, Wilson simply says "I win."
  • A Season 6 episode depicts Foreman observing Thirteen wearing a magnificent watch and Chase driving an awesome car that they felt like "treating themselves to." This leads Foreman to conclude that everyone else on the team is making more than him, despite his position as a senior fellow. When he goes to Cuddy and tries to bluff his way into raising his salary by threatening to leave for another hospital, the team starts to worry that Foreman might actually quit. When Foreman leaves for a job that doesn't exist, the team appeals to Cuddy to hire him back, saying it was all a ploy on their part to stop Foreman from acting like such an affected twit (The watch and the car were both borrowed from friends). After agreeing to bring Foreman back, reduce the team's salary, and add it to Foreman's, she tells them that she has no idea what they're talking about, and hasn't seen or spoken with Foreman in four days. Cue Foreman's appearance right outside Cuddy's office, smug smile and all.
    Foreman: The phrase... "Who's ya daddy?" comes to mind.
  • This occurs in the Season 8 episode "Chase", surprisingly on House against Taub. Throughout most of the episode, House is constantly attempting to successfully ambush Taub, who's been taking self defense classes, and Taub is shown to be surprisingly adept at reacting to whatever House throws at him. He also reveals, however, that constantly being on guard against House's attacks forces him to try to think three steps ahead of House; in one scene, House assigns Taub to "obviously fraudulent lab work" so that he'd know exactly where Taub would be at the time so he could leap out and blast him with a squirt gun (and as a bonus, he'd get to watch Taub's paranoia at work beforehand, watching him look in all the wrong places for the oncoming attack.) After he leaps out and fires, however, it turns out Taub already rigged the squirt gun to misfire, and instead it squirts at House's own face.
• iCarly:
  • In "iRue the Day", Nevel repeatedly sabotoges the iCarly show as revenge for Carly not kissing him, so Carly, Sam and Freddie plan to sabotoge Nevel's website, Nevelocity.com, as payback. They proceed to distract Nevel long enough to hack into the site; however, Nevel knew about their plan the whole time, and instead of Nevelocity crashing, he crashes Freddie's laptop instead.
  • In "iGet Pranky", the iCarlys plan to stop Spencer's pranking by pulling a prank of their own on him — lure him into the basement and have him pick up a dollar on the floor, then have Gibby drop down on him. However, Spencer knew ahead of the prank and uses a broom and some bubble gum to pick up the dollar without even walking over there.
• Pretty much how the team beats the Villain of the Week in every episode of Leverage.
  • A season finale involves the team squaring off against their most dangerous opponent yet — the guy from the pilot who put the team together in the first place. He knows every single con they pull to the point of knowing exactly which algorithm Hardison will use to hack a hydroelectric plant's computer. Fortunately, the team realize this and get the help of several acquaintances (including Parker's aging Gentleman Thief mentor and Nate's ex-wife) and former opponents (The Cracker Chaos and the bruiser who beat up Eliot in the first season). In the end, Nate has the two Big Bads cornered on a precipice with a gun pointing at them, choosing which one to kill. Then he sees his team and changes his mind. He leaves the gun at the edge of the precipice and walks away, knowing full well that the Big Bads would lunge for it and fall.
• In Mad Men, Duck Phillips tries to leverage Don Draper out of his position at Sterling Cooper through a corporate buyout that would leave him as President and Draper's creative division nearly devastated. He does all this, since any contract Draper was working under would definitely have a clause restricting him from taking clients with him should he leave the firm. The hitch in Duck's plan? Don doesn't have a contract at all.
• Happens to Jane in The Mentalist virtually every time Red John comes around, with Jane thinking he's playing Red John, while Red John is always playing him. Probably the most notable example is in "The Crimson Hat" when Jane thinks he's tricked Red John and is going to meet him while in reality, Red John not only knows it's a trick and adjusts accordingly, but takes it a step further by setting up Wainwright as his stand-in to be ultimately shot and killed by the FBI.
  • One episode has a more mundane example when Jane, having followed the killer via a tracking device, confronts them on a rooftop, where they're about to dispatch their next victim. When the killer points out that they're the one with the gun, Jane replies that he also brought a gun, whereupon Lisbon comes out of hiding and demands the killer drop their weapon. The killer just mutters "So predictable", whereupon an accomplice comes out of hiding and demands Lisbon drop her weapon.
• In Noah's Arc, Guy has an elaborate plan to manipulate both Alex and Trey, involving staging random accidents that Guy can "fix", breaking down Alex's credibility in the eyes of Trey and Alex's friends, and a Wounded Gazelle Gambit. As complex as Guy's plan is, he's Out-Gambitted by Alex and his friends concocting a simple fake note, tricking Guy into revealing his feelings for Trey (who was never interested to begin with).
• Parks and Recreation has Ron's stash of gold, mentioned in "Ron and Tammy". When she claims she dug it up...
  Ron: That was fake gold. Do you really think I'd just leave gold lying underground in a locked safe, where anyone could find it?
• Prison Break: Michael manages to out-gambit his enemies several times throughout the series with backup and contingency plans.
• Psychopath Diary: In-woo plans to kill Bo-kyung and make it look like suicide. Dong-sik realises his plan. No one will take Dong-sik's warnings seriously because they all think he's a serial killer, so he exploits this by pretending to threaten Bo-kyung. The police assume he really means to harm her so they immediately start looking for her. In-woo has to flee and Bo-kyung survives.
• In the Season 2 finale of The Sandbaggers, Burnside spends the entire episode maneuvering to convince Wellingham to appoint Peele as the head of SIS, as Gibbs, the other candidate for the job, is someone he has a long-standing rivalry with; he spies on Wellingham to find out what he wants and feeds the information to Peele, goes looking for skeletons in Gibbs' closet and tells Wellingham they're common office gossip, and so on. Then Peele writes a memo that clearly displays him to be unfit for the job, and Burnside has to go back to Wellingham and walk back everything he's said, and Wellingham reveals that he knew all along what Burnside was up to, had already made the decision to appoint Gibbs, and had maneuvered Peele into writing the memo in order to convince Burnside that he wasn't a suitable candidate.
• In the third season finale of Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes himself is the recipient of this trope, at the hands of "the Emperor of Blackmail," Charles Augustus Magnussen. Holmes has made a Deal with the Devil to take Magnussen down — in exchange for Magnussen's blackmail materials, especially those related to Mary Watson's bloody past as a CIA agent, Magnussen will receive Mycroft's laptop, which contains valuable MI6 secrets. Magnussen agrees to the deal and flies Holmes and Watson to his island mansion, where he reveals that there never were any blackmail materials — Magnussen's memory is just so good that he can remember every incriminating detail he's ever learned about everyone he's ever met. And he's already called MI6 to arrest Holmes and Watson for selling state secrets. Holmes is so utterly dumbfounded at being gotten the better of that to prevent the villain from getting away with his crimes and save Watson from Death Row, he decides to kill Magnussen himself and surrender to government custody.
  • Sherlock pulled this on Moriarty at the end of Season 2/beginning of Season 3. The latter, while being interrogated by Mycroft, got lots of little hints about Sherlock, learning more about his captor than his captor knew about him. He proceeded to use these to set up Sherlock as a Hero with Bad Publicity, framed him for kidnapping, turned the police against him, and made him commit suicide. Except that Sherlock and Mycroft knew exactly what they were doing, fed Moriarty enough rope to hang himself with, and in the end Moriarty shot himself while Sherlock escaped easily and spent the next two years dismantling Moriarty's criminal network, coming home to a hero's welcome.
• Smallville:
  • Victoria Hardwick, one of Lex's early love interests, persuaded him to help her father take over LuthorCorp. Lex suggested they take over both their fathers' companies together. She then stole information from him that Cadmus was a prosperous lab and that LuthorCorp had sunk all their money into a bid for the company, and arranged for Hardwick to outbid them. When she revealed this to him, he explained that the data was fake and Hardwick had bought a worthless company, leaving them financially vulnerable and allowing LuthorCorp to buy them in turn.
  • Tess manages to out-gambit (the Alternate Universe version of) her own father, Lionel Luthor, who is the epitome of Magnificent Bastard, after he usurps control of LuthorCorp from her. He really should have known better than to underestimate his own daughter, even if the version of her from his universe is a Bastard Bastard who doesn't meet any of his expectations. He honestly seems a mix between shocked, furious, and impressed.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "The Defector", a Romulan defector, Admiral Jarok, comes to the Enterprise, bringing news of a Romulan base being built within the Neutral Zone that he feels will be used to start a war with the Federation. After much thought about whether to investigate, they go to the site, but discover that there never was a base; Jarok had been fed false information to test his loyalty. Before they can leave the Neutral Zone, two Romulan warbirds, one commanded by Commander Tomalak, decloak and demand the surrender of the Enterprise. However, Picard foresaw this possibility, and brought along three cloaked Klingon Birds-of-Prey as backup, ensuring a Mutual Kill if the shooting starts. Tomalak backs down, but Jarok, upset that he defected for nothing, commits suicide afterwards.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: In the two-part story "Improbable Cause"/"The Die is Cast", the Obsidian Order and Tal Shiar team up to launch a sneak attack on the changeling homeworld using a fleet of cloaked ships. However, after their opening barrage, they find out the planet is deserted and there are 150 Jem'Hadar warships screaming out of the nearby nebula. Turns out the changelings had known about the plan and deliberately allowed them to walk into a trap, Battle of Midway style. A changeling had even replaced the Romulan commander to ensure their own success. While the Tal Shiar eventually recover, the Order is annihilated, and the Cardassian Central Command is overthrown shortly thereafter.
• Star Trek: Voyager: In "Counterpoint", Voyager is smuggling telepathic refugees to a hard-to-find, mobile wormhole, so they can escape a repressive telepathic regime, despite repeated inspections by soldiers led by Inspector Kashyk, who lets his men search the ship (ineffectively, since the telepaths are kept in the transporter buffer during the inspections). Then he arrives on his own, claiming to be a defector and to have always known about the transporter trick and never told his men. Together, he and Janeway make great headway in finding the wormhole, but before the work is completed, he has to return to his crew to keep them being ineffectual and prevent them becoming suspicious. He then returns in an official capacity and, with his second-in-command out of the room, asks Janeway if she's located the wormhole. As soon as she tells him where it is, he calls in his second, orders his men to materialize the telepaths and flies Voyager to the wormhole, intending to destroy it to prevent further escapees. Except the wormhole isn't there, the transporter buffer is full of vegetables, and the telepaths are already on their way to the actual wormhole location in cloaked shuttles — using cloaking methods Kashyk shared with Janeway as part of his defector ruse.
  Kashyk: You created false readings.
  Janeway: That is the theme for this evening, isn't it?
• Supernatural:
  • In the sixth season finale, Castiel and Crowley have a simple plan: open the door to Purgatory and harvest the power of all the souls within. Castiel (being the more powerful of the two) decides to cut Crowley out of the deal at the last minute, and take all the power for himself. Very quickly, this starts to look like a bad decision on Castiel's part, because Crowley immediately seeks out and 'defects' to Castiel's most powerful enemy: the Archangel Raphael. Crowley offers Raphael the original deal and together, Raphael and Crowley force Castiel to flee, leaving behind all the ingredients for the spell. Unfortunately for Crowley and Raphael, Castiel wasn't taken by surprise at all. What he left behind include a fake version of one ingredient; something rare, hard to get, and crucial to the spell. He'd already hidden the real item away somewhere else. While Raphael and Crowley waste their time trying to cast a spell that can never work, Castiel is able to complete his work without threat or interruption. By the time he finishes, he's pretty much the most powerful being in the Supernatural universe. Only God, and probably Death, are stronger. Raphael doesn't fare very well after that.
  • All the Winchesters have managed to successfully pull this on occasion. Henry, John, and Sam are all pretty good, but the real master has to be Dean. More often than not, Dean manages to defeat what ever being of much greater strength, power, or intelligence (or all three) he is up against, but making them think they are winning. 9/10 if Dean is surrendering, losing his cool, and acting irrationally or seemingly being defeated badly, you're five seconds away from him defeating them in one big master stroke.
• Happens in Third Watch in the final season. A serial killer is playing games with two cops and won't tell them where his latest victim is hidden before she dies — he knows pretty much the exact hour this happens. However, he's willing to divulge her location after that hour. What the cops do? Since the perp has no way of knowing the time outside of the interrogation room, they switch the clocks.

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