Basic Trope: Everyone is manipulating everyone else.
- Straight: Many of the main characters have hidden plans which need other people to be manipulated for it to work, including those who also have a plan.
- Exaggerated: Every character, including one-off characters, pets, have overly convoluted plans with thousands upon thousands of fail-safes involving manipulating every other character into mere unwitting pawns. Hilarity Ensues.
- Downplayed: Many characters have hidden plans but not a majority of the cast.
- Justified: It's a story that has as its main plot point everybody being paranoid of each other. Having a plan to get rid of everybody else is understandable, especially because none of them will coordinate.
- Inverted: Nobody has a clue what they're doing and the entire plot is based on Indy Ploys.
- Subverted:
- It seems like several characters might have a hidden plan, but it turns out that they don't.
- The various plans are actually part of a single Gambit Roulette, and all the various planners are actually Unwitting Pawns under the control of a single godlike manipulator.
- Double Subverted:
- ...but that was just a façade, or a lie to hide they really did have a plan!
- Something goes wrong, and it turns out the supposedly godlike manipulator, is just one of many, an insignificant rung on an entire ladder of manipulative demigods. It's Xanatos Gambits all the way down!
- Parodied:
- All the plans become so convoluted and confusing they also seem ridiculous and are doomed to failure.
- Faye keeps a "Plan Flowchart" to keep herself in on the loop.
- The various faction hold a truce in order to figure out who is actually responsible for what.
- Zig Zagged:???
- Averted:
- There are no plans.
- Only one character has a plan.
- Enforced: A toy company makes a brand of toy with multiple factions. They want all of the factions to be equally represented in the TV show, so they all have their own individual plans against each other.
- Lampshaded: "Is there anyone here that doesn't have a Hidden agenda!"
- Invoked: The Man Behind the Man manipulates people to make multiple, complex plans to confuse his enemy.
- Exploited:
- Somebody gives a person with a plan false information about another plan so their plan will fail.
- Emperor Evulz deliberatly fosters chaos and acts as a Spanner in the Works because he's an Opportunistic Bastard. The chaos that the Gambit Pileup causes is the ideal environment for him to thrive.
- Defied: One of the characters just keeps his head down and tries to survive the whole mess. He has absolutely no plans otherwise, and refuses to take part in any of the plans already being played.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed:
- All the plans end up failing due to being Out-Gambitted, which leads the characters to decide to use violence instead of trying to scheme.
- Because of how interconnected everyone's plans are, a single Spanner in the Works brings all of them crashing down.
- Reconstructed:
- However, swapping to mindless violence means the characters can be exploited by another planner. Other ex-planners realise what's happening and start plotting again.
- With everyone else's plan's destroyed, the person who was building up a power base behind the scenes is free to complete his objective with no competition... Until another planner reveals he had prepared in case something like this happened.
Back to Gambit Pileup.
