Basic Trope: A plan that relies on its victims doing what the planner expected them to do.
- Straight: Alice manipulates Bob into beating up a civilian disguising him/herself as a robber based on his need to protect the weak.
- Exaggerated: Alice tricks Bob into beating up an entire community disguising themselves as her thugs because she knows that Bob will protect the weak no matter what.
- Downplayed: Alice tricks Bob into offending a person disguised as one of Alice's thugs.
- Justified:
- Inverted: Gambit Roulette
- Subverted: Alice, predicting that Bob will protect the weak, tricks the latter into beating a civilian disguised as one of her thugs. However, Bob figures out what Alice is planning.
- Double Subverted: Kansas City Shuffle
- Parodied:
- Bob's birth, childhood, and entire life were planned by Alice so that she could set up her ridiculous complicated master plan.
- Alice thinks Bob has a completely different personality than his actual personality, and so her Gambits are constantly foiled by him being Too Dumb to Fool, much to her consternation.
- Zig Zagged: Alice tries to set up a plan based off of Bob's reactions that he sees through and defuses, only for her to reveal that she had contingencies based on that possibility that still benefit her, only for Bob to reveal that he wrecked those plots too.
- Averted: Alice doesn't predict Bob's action and decides not to trick him.
- Enforced: "This episode, set up a bunch of events for Bob that Alice can reveal she arranged to her advantage in the season finale."
- Lampshaded: "Crud! I did exactly as you expected me to do!"
- Invoked: Alice sends several minions off to attack Bob while disguised as members of the rebel group so that Bob will be conditioned to fighting the rebels instead of pulling an Enemy Mine.
- Implied: We get an elaborate Gilligan Cut of Bob insisting that he will do something, Alice (somewhere very far away) saying that she can make Bob do something else, and then Bob performing that thing Alice said.
- Exploited: Bob, who strongly believes in protecting the weak, discovers Alice's plan and thinks of a way to counter her plan.
- Defied:
- Alice considers a plan like this, but then decides that she can't reliably predict Bob's reactions with enough certainty.
- Alice sets up the plan, thinking that she can predict Bob's actions to a "T". Bob performs a Rage Quit, never approaching the place where the plan would happen.
- Alice sets up the plan, knowing she can predict Bob's actions to a "T". Bob sends his friend Bill instead, who Alice has no idea of how to deal with.
- Alice sets up the plan, knowing she can predict Bob's actions to a "T". Charlie, however, warns Bob of Alice's plan, thus ruining everything.
- Alice sets up the plan, knowing she can predict Bob's actions to a "T". Before she can execute it, however, Dave (whom she's never met) wanders onto the scene and inadvertently screws everything up.
- Bob keeps himself in constant contact with people that can provide a different point of view of whatever is happening and tell him if he's running into one of Alice's plans, with a proviso to stay put or run away no matter what if Alice cuts off the contact. The Power of Friendship may or may not prevent all of Alice's manipulations, but there is strength in numbers.
- What Bob does to Alice in revenge for doing the switcheroo trick once is horrifying enough that Alice decides not to take her chances with this plan ever again. There's still many other ways to swindle Bob as long as she's still alive, after all...
- Discussed
- Alice: “Bob is so predictable! All I need to do is dress some civilians as robbers, and he’ll beat them up and ruin his reputation!”
- Bob: “Alice is going for the old ‘dress-the-civilians-as-robbers’ trick. Well, fool me once …”
- Conversed: “Alice did the old ‘dress-the-civilians-as-robbers’ trick. How many times is Bob going to fall for that one?”
- Deconstructed:
- Alice is a good manipulator, but once she runs into a plan full of X-Factors that she cannot figure the psychology of or who just will not accept being manipulated, she is screwed.
- The Batman Gambit goes horribly wrong or horribly right, such as making Bob angry so he will be more sloppy in a fight works, but as a trade-off Bob is now running on Unstoppable Rage... as in "slasher villains are easier to stop" 'unstoppable'.
- Reconstructed: Alice just has to stay on her niche, and she will be virtually invincible.
- Played For Laughs: Bob's barrage of falling to Alice's schemes is represented by a montage of Gilligan Cuts and Duck Season, Rabbit Season arguments.
- Played For Drama: Bob's desperate attempt at running away from his bully Alice is thwarted because she knows him so well that she can predict every route of escape he will take.
- Played For Horror: Alice the Yandere leads Bob to a place where she can kill him at her leisure by exploiting the reasons he would walk away with an Obviously Evil psycho like her.
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