Paranoia Gambit



"''"Take that cup of coffee, for instance. Maybe this morning when you weren't looking, I poured in a jar of my own urine while it was brewing. Or maybe I didn't. Anyone else, you could read their mind and find out, but with me you'll never know. So I think I'll have a very nice day, in fact. Enjoy your coffee.""

- Ocelot, The Last Days of Foxhound

A variant of the Batman Gambit which is usually played for comedy. Alice tells Bob that she will "get him". Bob freaks out and goes to great lengths to avoid falling victim to her plans. In the end, it turns out that Alice wasn't going to do anything to him and that her whole plan was to just sit back and let his paranoia make him do stupid things to himself.

May overlap with Self-Fulfilling Prophecy when paranoia of a specific event causes said event to occur.

Anime and Manga

 * Guu in Haré+Guu regularly uses this tactic to torment Haré; having established how far she is willing to go, including distorting reality, to mess with him, she can often get the same result by doing absolutely nothing, allowing Haré to drive himself crazy wondering what she might do.
 * Liar Game: Akiyama kept 24 hour surveillance on Nao's opponent to mess up his judgements. He did absolutely nothing else to the man until an hour before collection time...
 * Code Geass' first season has Lelouch pull off one against Jeremiah. You know which one I'm talking about: "Also, Orange". Specifically, he spoke what appeared to be a codeword to an enemy combatant; it doesn't mean anything but the Britannians don't know that and devote precious counter-intelligence resources to finding it out. The fact that Jeremiah got demoted for unwillingly helping Lelouch escape due to the latter's Compelling Voice (again, the Britannians don't know about that so they thought it was from blackmail related to the "codeword") was just a nice bonus.
 * This is L's tactic in Death Note, to apply the pressure of Paranoia Fuel and watch for a Revealing Coverup. It does work, but not as successfully as he'd hoped; he counts the small victories until he has to concede defeat.

Comic Books

 * In Archie Comics, Jughead does this at least once to Reggie.
 * 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 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 Marv Wolfman's DuckTales (1987) 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.
 * 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.
 * A Green Lantern annual written by Alan Moore describes how Abin Sur, on a rescue mission to a demonic prison world, was told by one of the imprisoned demons that he would die when his power ring failed him at a crucial moment. This convinces him to fly a ship rather than travel through space on his own... setting the stage for the the accident that killed him.
 * 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 PS238 Clay found one more way to keep Zodon occupied.

Fan Works

 * In Oh God, Not Again, mentions his plans to do this. "It's going to take every ounce of my considerable self-control, but I want to wait until [Snape's] so paranoid he can't sleep before I start in on him."
 * In A Prank Too Many, a Transformers fic, Sideswipe spends an entire week playing various pranks on Tracks. Tracks retaliates with two words and this trope.

Film

 * In The Tall Blond Man With One Black Shoe, the head of the French secret service pulls one of these on his Starscream number two, by convincing him that a completely random stranger, the titular blond, is in fact a top agent who will "deal with him". This causes the number two to get increasingly paranoid, and eventually results in.

Literature
"Only once, in the entire history of witchery on the Ramtops, had a thief broken into a witch's cottage. The witch concerned visited the most terrible punishment on him. She did nothing, although sometimes when she saw him in the village she'd smile in a faint, puzzled way. After three weeks of this the suspense was too much for him and he took his own life; in fact he took it all the way across the continent, where he became a reformed character and never went home again."
 * From Terry Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters:


 * Also from Discworld, the short story The Sea and Little Fishes. Granny Weatherwax does this to the entire Witch community merely by smiling and offering to help kindly.
 * In the introduction of the Raymond Smullyan logic puzzle book What Is The Name Of This Book?, the author talks about an incident in his childhood when his sister promised him she would "get him good" one April Fools Day. After a paranoia-filled day Smullyan proudly announced that April 1 was over and she hadn't got him once. She retorted that fooling him into fearing a non-existent prank was the prank. But since the prank was that there was no prank, was he really fooled or not?
 * One of the characters in Diana Wynne Jones' Dark Lord of Derkholm performs one of these on himself, though not intentionally. He just knows that his sister, Shona, is mad at him for letting their mother put a spell on her, and he remembers very clearly the way she waited patiently for days to take revenge on one of their siblings when she was younger. He never stops to think that maybe she's matured since then, and all this distracts him from fulfilling his mission, which was tough enough already.
 * In the Isaac Asimov story The Acquisitive Chuckle, a rich collector's business partnership goes bad, and as the partner leaves, he snaps his suitcase shut in a suspicious manner and chuckles "acquisitively". The collector freaks out and his life goes downhill as he frantically searches through everything he owns to try to find out what valuable item his partner stole from him. Years later, his lawyer confronts the thief and asks him what he took. His answer? "Only his peace of mind, sir."
 * In a rather more serious example, a woman in an Agatha Christie short story discovers
 * A related short story (can't remember the title just now), has a book critic happen upon
 * The Doctor Who Expanded Universe novel The Doctor Trap. There's a lot of I Know You Know I Know about the titular trap the Doctor has supposedly set for the villain, but what it boils down to is that as long as the villain believes there's a Doctor Trap, the Doctor has the upper hand.
 * In Tangled Webs a drow said that they have a proverb "Revenge is Best Served Cold"... and the second meaning is that knowing there's a scheming vengeful bastard out to get even have the target sweating before the actual revenge is done. As a bonus.
 * Zhuge Liang's Empty Fortress Strategy in Romance of the Three Kingdoms was one of these mixed with Refuge in Audacity. In a bad position with a massively superior army headed his way, Zhuge Liang sent most of his troops away and had the rest disguise themselves, leaving the fort almost completely defenseless. Then he proceeded to go up on the wall and calmly play the zither, ignoring the approaching army. Upon seeing this, Zhuge Liang's arch-rival Sima Yi immediately expected a trap, since he knew Zhuge Liang to be a man who took very few risks and was prone to feigning weakness to bait an ambush. Ignoring the advice of his son, Sima Yi abandoned direct assault to try and get around the obvious trap before him...and wound up marching his army into Zhuge Liang's actual trap.
 * Holes: After Stanley has learned to no longer expect water from the vengeful Mr. Sir, Mr. Sir surprises him by refilling his canteen that day. But then he takes it to his car and gives it back a minute later, still full. Then he waits for Stanley to drink from it. When he's so thirsty he can no longer bear it, Stanley pours the entire contents of the canteen, refusing to drink from it thanks to his suspicion.

Live Action TV
"Two: Don't tell them. Don't report me. Six: I don't intend to. *beat* You are going to report yourself. Two: * taking the phone* I have to report a breakdown in control. Number Two needs to be replaced. * beat* Yes, this is Number Two reporting."
 * The Everybody Loves Raymond episode "Getting Even" has Debra pulling this on Ray.
 * Megan does this in an episode of Drake and Josh. It works hilariously. At the end of the episode, she does something to Drake and Josh anyway. That's just her doing things to them for the hell of it again, just like she always does. It's that type of behavior that made the gambit work in the first place (she actually told them she wasn't going to do anything and let her past actions speak for themselves.)
 * Mash Season 11 episode "The Joker Is Wild". BJ Hunnicutt bets Hawkeye he can play a practical joke on each of the main characters. As the other characters fall victim to pranks one at a time, Hawkeye becomes increasingly worried about when he is going to get his, ending up camping outside in his bed, surrounded by barbed wire. At the end Hawkeye learns that.
 * Which technically means that
 * How I Met Your Mother
 * Played for all its worth in the episode "Slapsgiving". In a previous episode ("Slap Bet"), Marshall has been allotted five slaps that he can give to Barney. He has chosen to give the third slap at Thanksgiving, going so far as to post a countdown online. The anticipation starts to get to Barney, and Marshall's tactics to psych him out don't help any. Tired of the whole thing, Lily (as "slap bet commissioner") calls it off so that they could have a pleasant Thanksgiving dinner. But Barney's gloating as the countdown approaches get to her, and at the last moment she lets Marshall slap him just to shut him up.
 * Turned Up to Eleven in "Slapsgiving 2: Revenge of the Slap". In honor of Thanksgiving, Marshall gives his fourth slap to Ted and Robin, who spend most of the episode arguing about who gets it. It ends with the rights to the slap being passed all around the room, (with each preparing to take the slap before passing it off to someone else, much to Barney's increased torture) until Marshall, saying that the togetherness it's caused is what he wanted, calls the slap off.
 * Mr. Wick tries this once on The Drew Carey Show, but fails miserably. After Drew punches Mr. Wick in the face, they agree that Wick should be allowed to punch Drew as well. Wick tries playing up the paranoia angle, saying Drew will never know where or when the punch is coming, but Drew just ignores the taunts and goes on with his life. When Mr. Wick finally does punch him, Drew is barely even fazed, while Wick's fist is severely hurt.
 * In The Prisoner, Number Six does this to a cruel Number Two in the episode "Hammer Into Anvil".
 * Specifically, Six acts as if he was planted by Two's superiors and is sending them cryptic messages questioning his loyalty; Two not only tears his hair out trying to follow the trail, but pushes away one colleague after another as untrustworthy. At the end, when Six points out that a loyal man would have left it alone:

"Garibaldi: I wonder if they'll ever find that transmitter you slipped in G'kar's drink. Sinclair: No they won't. Because there is none. If I had put one in, sooner or later, they would have found it. This way, they'll keep looking. Garibaldi: Are you aware of the tests they'll perform and the things they'll do to him? Sinclair: Yes. Come on. Garibaldi: There are some days I love this job."
 * The Janitor has done this to JD once or twice in Scrubs.
 * He also comes up with a nasty inversion for "Sunny" Dey; while trapping the rest of the interns in the elevator, he tells her that she's "too weak" for him to take revenge on. She spends the entire day trying to get him to do something nasty to her, until she finally confronts him and says she isn't weak. He replies that of course she isn't; that's why he came up with a special torture for her.
 * DJ does this to Stephanie in an episode of Full House as punishment for listening in on her phone calls.
 * In one Cheers episode, Diane tricks the bar folk, then becomes increasingly paranoid that they're plotting revenge. When she's asked to read her poetry for a TV show, she thinks it's a ruse, and humiliates herself by clucking like a chicken on television. Turns out all the gang intended to do was dump a bucket of water on her.
 * In another episode, the Cheers gang pulls a prank on rival bar Gary's, and the paranoia becomes so intense they shave their own heads on the idea that this will prevent retribution. Turns out Gary was out of town and didn't even know about the prank.
 * Done to Jerry on Seinfeld by a pissed-off girlfriend who, in response to his accidentally knocking her toothbrush in the toilet and not telling her for several days, proceeded to put something of his in the toilet when he wasn't looking. Jerry, a neat-freak, proceeds to start throwing out random things in his apartment, until she finally reveals it was.
 * Babylon 5

"Ben: Wow, you guys have some real trust issues, don't you? Guess it makes sense she didn't tell you, what with you two fighting all the time. Of course, if I was one of them - these people you seem to think are your enemies - what would I do? Well, there'd be no balloon, so I'd draw a map to a real secluded place like a cave or some underbrush - good place for a trap - an ambush. And when your friends got there, a bunch of my people would be waiting for them. Then they'd use them to trade for me. I guess it's a good thing I'm not one of them, huh? You guys got any milk?"
 * Doctor Who: The Doctor used this as a trigger for, against . The audience knows full well that the threatened six words that would bring her down were But all she knows is that it's something that the Doctor knows. And the Doctor may have met her later, so even if it's something only she could know now, he could still know it. And the Doctor tells a random person whose only job was translating, so it looks like he's relying on rumor mill—it could be anything, and now everyone knows.
 * Ben uses this to wonderfully creepy affect in the Lost episode "The Whole Truth"


 * In The Office, Dwight ambushes Jim by hiding inside a snowman. Later that day, when Jim is walking to his car, he finds himself surrounded by snowmen. As Jim snaps and starts destroying every one of them, Dwight watches from the roof. "The greatest snowball is fear. Merry Christmas."
 * Used in an episode of NCIS as retaliation for black ink on the binocular eyepieces. Ziva's increasing paranoia over what Tony will do for revenge leads her to do such things as throw away her lunch when she finds out he picked up the order.
 * The Trope Codifier in TV may be the episode "The Impractical Joke" of The Dick Van Dyke Show. After Buddy gets a friend to play a practical joke on Rob, Rob decides that the best revenge is to make Buddy increasingly paranoid about what Rob's revenge will be.

Newspaper Comics
"Peter: [Thinking while eating the sandwich] Works every time. Jason: [Grinning] Don't you want to eat my sandwich?"
 * Beetle Bailey: "The trick was, there was no trick."
 * The above quote is from a FoxTrot story when Peter accidentally destroyed Jason's rocket, causing the latter to proclaim that he will have his vengeance in the next 12 hours. This led to Peter, among other things jumping out of his room window after hearing a knock on the door, hiding all the knives in the house inside the toilet tank, destroyed his mom's rose bush by hiding in it then hiding under the couch dirtying the house (all of the aforementioned actions causing him to be grounded), eating leaves for dinner and lying on dog poop for several hours. Just as Jason planned.
 * Another strip had Paige getting ready to eat a sandwich only to find Peter staring at her with an evil grin. She proceeds to bombard Peter with questions about why he's smiling and if he did something to her sandwich (specifically spitting on it) only for him to constantly shoot her down. Paige then dares him to eat the sandwich...


 * All three Fox siblings have fallen for this at some point. Another strip has Jason hiding in the garbage after playing some prank on Paige. Peter and Paige then talk about how they love it when their little brother punishes himself.
 * This Garfield comic.

Video Games

 * Expertly done in Amnesia the Dark Descent. A particularly notable example is how, early in the game, it will give you the helpful hint of how to hide from monsters. Of course, there are no monsters for quite a while...not that you know that. The game in general does this so well, minor sounds can get you to scream just because the tension is that high and you're that paranoid.
 * In The Elder Scrolls series, on of the myths surrounding Sheogorath (the Affably Evil daedric prince of madness) has him drive a powerful completly insane using this trick (said wizard comes asking for power, Sheogorath says he can have it if he stays sane for three days, the fear drives said wizard completly bonkers even though Sheogorath hadn't bothered doing anything).
 * You Don't Know Jack, starting in volume 3, has a category known as Impossible Questions, mind-bendingly difficult questions which are worth a game-breaking $20,000 to whoever can get one right (or a game-breaking loss of $20,000 for whoever gets one wrong.) One of the Impossible Questions is from a category called "It's a Dog!" The question is "What has four legs, barks, and is a common household pet?" Awkward silence from the contestants. (The answer really is "a dog.")

Webcomics

 * In Freefall, Sam Starfall's reputation for pulling these off is so well-known that it works even when he doesn't actually have a plan.
 * Pintsize tries to do this once in Questionable Content, but the rest of the cast are too Genre Savvy to fall for it.
 * Miho does this to Largo in Megatokyo, just to mess with him. She tells him she left a present for him in his apartment, which he naturally assumes could be anything up to and including a bomb. She later admits to Piro that she didn't really get a present for Largo, but she hopes he enjoyed it nevertheless.
 * Interestingly, Miho may have done him a favor, since Largo's heightened paranoia allowed him to intercept one of Erika's crazier fanboys before he could reach her. Whether Miho planned this or even realized it after the fact is never explained.
 * In The Last Days of Foxhound, Psycho Mantis and Ocelot tend to pull this ploy on each other with various degrees of success.
 * Xkcd does this with Rickrolling.
 * In Sluggy Freelance Bun-Bun pulls one of these on Riff, though he later gets revenge in a more direct way.
 * Think Tank in Sequential Art used it when playing a wargame to beat Pip in an embarassingly simple way.
 * Doubly subverted in the series beginning from this Absurd Notions strip.
 * In this Subnormality strip, a harassed and undertipped waitress psyches two businessmen into thinking she messed with their free coffee.
 * In Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic the Drow Queen poisoned a Grey Elf representative on a meeting and chose to send Arachne instead of herself to the next one. Knowing this, Arachne decides to give some wine as a "peace offering" from her Queen to the replacement Grey Elf rep. Naturally, Hilarity Ensues.

Web Original

 * In Unreal Estate, Kisei does this to

Western Animation
"Bruce: Mockridge may have his money, but he won't be sleeping well. "How much is a good night's sleep worth?" Now THERE'S a riddle for you."
 * After Roy of U.S. Acres (on Garfield and Friends) plays a practical joke on Orson, Orson uses this as a revenge. Of course,
 * An episode of The Angry Beavers does this: Norbert spends the majority of the episode telling Dagget "gonna get ya".
 * And then he subverts it at the end by punishing him anyway.
 * On American Dad, Klaus swears revenge on Steve and Roger after they pull a prank on him, and they spend most of the episode going insane from anticipation. Subverted when
 * In Family Guy, Stewie once offered Brian a free shot at him after a particularly brutal beating over some money Brian owed him after a bet. Brian says he's not going to tell him when it's going to happen. Stewie goes nuts to the point of beating himself to try to even it out..
 * Justice League Unlimited: see What the Hell, Hero?.
 * A variant in The Spectacular Spider-Man: Eddie Brock returns to town without telling anyone, and messes with Peter's head by following him around and letting Peter get occasional glimpses of him, eventually even making a suit that makes him look like Venom at a distance. The purpose is to get Peter to check on where he left the Venom symbiote, leading Eddie to it in the process.
 * Candace of Phineas and Ferb pulls this on herself in "The Best Lazy Day Ever", when her brothers decide to spend the day relaxing in the sunshine. Without one of their insanely ambitious schemes to expose to their mother she doesn't know what to do, working herself up to encouraging them to take on a project and finally doing it herself. Phineas and Ferb remain idle under their tree the whole time.
 * Despite this basically being 2/3 of Batman's M.O., one episode of the animated series features the Riddler pulling an epic one.. Sort of. His origin episode revolves around him going after Mockridge, the man who cheated him out of the profits for a game he designed due to him being 'work-for-hire'. Batman and Robin manage to save him, but the Riddler gets away and hints he will eventually return to finish the job. The episode ends with a terrified Mockridge in his mansion, locking every door and window in the place, checking every shadow, and getting into bed with a loaded shotgun at his side while Bruce muses on the situation:

"Huey: I get it! This must all be a lesson on how we shouldn’t live in fear! Dewey: That… doesn’t sound like a Beakley lesson… Huey: That’s what makes it so clever! She fooled us! Ha! (flops onto his bunk with a relieved expression.) There was never going to be an attack! (Sees Webby clinging to the roof of the bunk right above him, grinning evilly.) Webby: This is the attack."
 * In the DuckTales reboot episode "Escape the Impossibin!" Beakley puts Huey and Dewey through a drill, with Webby playing the part of the notorious villain. She does the job very well, striking from the shadows to taunt and gloat, but never actually attacking them, promising she will when they are most vulnerable. Eventually, Huey thinks this is what she is doing:

Real Life

 * This bash.org quote.
 * If you're a guy and you have friends who are guys, never leave a beverage behind in a room with them. Either they will put some foul substance in said beverage and you will drink it, or they will pull one of these on you and you'll end up pouring the beverage down the toilet.
 * Some terrorist groups sometimes report the bombs they planted - in vague terms. Evacuation of a large public place and related panic (especially if the threat turned out to be real) causes plenty of terror, even without killing civilians.
 * Bomb threats in general do this. It's a way to cause financial loss to a company without all that mucking about with explosives. Due to paranoia (especially now in the OMG TERRORISTS! days) nearly everyplace will respond, even though, if they're getting a warning, there's a virtually nil chance that there's an actual explosive device (and vice versa)
 * That last bit may be true in the days of Al-Quaeda, but in the past many terrorist groups (such as the IRA) would give advance warnings if they were going to bomb a civilian area.
 * This xkcdb quote.