Paranoia Gambits in Comic Books.
- In Archie Comics, Jughead does this at least once to Reggie. One of these gambits culminated in Reggie pieing himself in the face just so that he'd stop freaking out over every little thing Jughead did being a potential set-up for a revenge prank.
- World of Archie Digest #1, Betty does this to Veronica.
- Minor example in Atomic Robo: NASA hired Robo to accompany the Viking probe to Mars, but then didn't pack him anything to read, because one of his enemies had snuck a note into his file describing a fictitious "power save state" that would get him through the trip with no need for entertainment. When the year-long trip is over and the billion-dollar probe is all set up...Robo: Now, as it'll take this message four minutes to reach you, and another four minutes for your reply to reach me, that gives me about eight minutes to destroy this piece of junk. He got fightin' mad, this Robo lad... NASA packed no books as he flew to Mars where the only law was he could break all their stuff! (sits back to wait for the screams)
- Subverted in a Batman story, in which a criminal becomes convinced that his new next-door neighbor is a disguised Batman trying to pull one of these on him. Eventually, the guy snaps and attacks his neighbor... whereupon the real Batman shows up.
- The Grendel series used a similar subversion, following a criminal and snitch's descent into paranoid madness, for fear that the original Grendel is stalking him. Grendel does show up at the end, but only because something completely unrelated reminded him of the (very petty) snitch.
- In Batman: The Dark Knight Annual #1, Batman ensures a peaceful Halloween by inviting the Penguin, the Scarecrow and the Mad Hatter to the abandoned Arkham Home for Youth. Each has received a note, seemingly from the others, inviting him to meet at Arkham for a some sort of lucrative business. Immediately, they suspect Batman is setting up an ambush, and thus become paranoid. Through the course of the story, the three villains manage to freak out, agitate, gas, and in the end scare the daylights out of one another. The comic ends with the discovery that Bruce Wayne sent the notes, knowing that the three villains would play to each others’ worst fears and stay occupied throughout the night, thus guaranteeing Bruce, and Batman, a restful Halloween.
- Often done by Diabolik against someone who really pissed him off, usually by making clear he's going to kill them when he's in the mood and then leaving, resulting in them ruining their lives in utter terror of what he'll do when he comes back. Considering his well-earned reputation as a murderer and King of Terror it works every time, even if he never spares a thought about them once he made sure it worked.
- In one particular occasion Diabolik did this to murder the director of a newspaper that had called him a fool that the police presented as a super thief to cover their own incompetence: after kidnapping him and poisoning the journalist who had written the article he told him he'd die in five days and released him. The poor director, terrified, hired bodyguards that would check anyone for Latex Perfection, would only eat food prepared by his personal cook and after it had been checked for poison, and lived those days in fear of Diabolik still killing him... Not knowing that, before releasing him, Diabolik had put a cyanide capsule in one of his dentures and terrified him so he would continuously clatter his teeth until the capsule broke, killing him on the fourth day. No newspaper dared to publish such an article again.
- In Marv Wolfman's DuckTales comic story "Scrooge's Quest", after Flintheart Glomgold buys out all of Scrooge's businesses and takes over Duckburg, Scrooge pulls this on Glomgold in the final chapter, "All That Glitters is Not Glomgold". By the end of the story, Glomgold is driven so far up the wall thinking Scrooge is out to sabotage him, that he decides victory isn't all it's cracked up to be and willingly tears up his ownership contract of the city.
- One Heavy Metal story involved the protagonists tricking the villain into giving up critical information by placing him in a realistic simulation where he thought he'd won. When they reveal this to him, he's informed he'll be left trapped in a hyper-realistic simulation for the rest of his life. As they leave, one of the protagonists reveals to the other that all she did was tell him he was trapped in a simulation.
- In Jon Sable, Freelance #21, Jon vows to make sure a woman named Carla who attempted to murder her husband (an old friend of Jon's) and left him him a coma spends the rest of her life in jail. Jon turns up wherever Carla goes, always making a point of being seen by her. At shops, restaurants, the ballet and even parking garages. Carla has grown anxious. Jon catches up with her again at Paul's stables and says hello to Widowmaker, the horse Paul rode in the Olympics. Jon says he is surprised that she is still there and she is confident and cocky that her lawyers can press the technicality of evidence obtained illegally and have the case thrown out. She takes Widowmaker for a ride, but keeps looking back. Eventually, she comes to a parked car, but finds the key gone and Jon sitting nearby, with it dangling from his hand.
- The first issue of the Roger Rabbit comic book had him becoming paranoid about his new weasel neighbor. Naturally, the weasel is harmless and just wants to be left alone.
