Batman Gambit/Video Games


 * The Reapers in the Mass Effect series incorporate a galactic-scale Batman Gambit into their life-cycle. They leave highly advanced technology around the galaxy to ensure that races develop along technological and cultural paths they desire.  Then, possessing the technology to counter what they left behind, they quickly eliminate all life in the galaxy . One could say that the Reapers are the living embodiment of the Batman Gambit.
 * Isaac pulls this on both Hector and Trevor in Castlevania: Curse of Darkness. He lures Hector (to whom he serves as a worthy opponent) along with the promise of eventually facing him in battle, and at the same time draws Trevor's attention. When he slips into the Infinite Corridor, Trevor is forced to let Hector into it... which leads to Hector accidentally breaking the seal on Dracula's Castle, Isaac's goal the entire time.
 * Of course, ultimately, we learn who the real wirepuller is. It's Dracula, of course; he'd be playing Gambit Roulette if he didn't already have his hooks deep into Hector and Isaac's psyches and thus a much greater chance of success than the average Yagami. The entire game is triggered by Dracula's effort to resurrect himself, to wit -- raise the castle with Isaac's yanking of Hector and Trevor, have Isaac stab that damn Belmont, then possess Hector when Hector finally gets sick of this nonsense and kills Isaac, thus sealing the curse. Alas, he wasn't counting on Julia being the only one in the game with a clue.
 * Also, in Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, Mathias Cronqvist used Leon Belmont to kill Walter Bernhard to absorb his soul. At the end, Mathias is implied to be the Dracula, Lord of the Vampires.
 * Implied? He slaps you in the face with the knowledge. The entire plot was designed so that he could become Dracula.
 * In Thief 2, the Big Bad runs a Batman Gambit on the sheriff and the Big Bad of Thief 3 uses a Batman Gambit on the whole Keeper organization.
 * In Overlord, the game turns out to be a Batman Gambit designed to allow the previous Overlord to easily return to his place in case he was "defeated", by taking over the body of the Wizard who helped slay him, manipulating one of the heroes who defeated him into becoming his temporary successor, and corrupting the other heroes so the new Overlord would be forced to eliminate them.
 * Hideo Kojima is absolutely crackers about these.
 * Metal Gear Solid features a hastily improvised Gambit (developed by the bad guys' resident psychic, sensibly enough) which revolves around a single-use keycard which will toggle a nuclear weapon from "active" to "inactive" or vice-versa. The bad guys seem to accept that facing off against the hero is a suicidal masquerade to set up deathbed conversions and make the plan convincing.
 * The sequel goes into a full-blown Gambit Roulette to underscore the power of the Government Conspiracy. Or sentient assemblage of constitutional amendments, or AIs, or whatever the hell they are.
 * The third game's tragic denouement reveals a Gambit (authored by an earlier iteration of the aforementioned conspiracy) which went right up to the pseudovillain's own demise at the hands of the hero.
 * And the fourth is basically a Gambit Pileup, so let's not get started....
 * All of the events within the PlayStation 2 Shinobi turn out to be one big Batman Gambit orchestrated by the Final Boss Hiruko: He manipulated Hotsuma into defeating Yatsurao so that the villain could absorb the countless number of souls that were subsequently released from the fallen giant. And he intended from the very beginning for Hotsuma to gather all of the souls of each foe he had sent to take him out, at which point he'd defeat Hotsuma and take all those souls for himself.
 * In .hack//G.U. In what is possibly the longest to ever occur in gaming, Ovan uses a Batman Gambit that spans three games in order to make Haseo
 * If you count the anime -- .hack//ROOTS -- then it takes even longer. And Ovan has to step in at one point to make corrections to Haseo's development.
 * In Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, the Labyrinth of Amala subquest has you tasked with defeating the ten Fiends and returning the Candelabrum they had stolen to Amala. If you complete the Labyrinth of Amala (it is optional) then the whole thing is revealed to be a Batman Gambit orchestrated by none other than.
 * From another Shin Megami Tensei game Persona 4 (which is about a murder mystery). Prodigy Detective Naoto Shirogane devises a plan to confirm his ] suspicions that the police caught a copycat killer, not the real killer.   When the Investigation Team find out about this, they let Naoto have it, pointing out that gambling your life on the assumption a third party will get to you in time, regardless of the rewards involved, is really, really fucking stupid.
 * The entirety of Assassin's Creed is actually two giant Batman Gambits. The first, planned by The Dragon, Robert de Sable, involves using the Assassins' killing of his lieutenants, all of whom are important members of Saladin and Richard the Lionheart's respective support networks, to unite the Saracen and Crusader armies to crush the Assassins. The second is planned out by plotting to take over the Holy Land for himself.
 * And all that was a Xanatos Gambit by Abstergo to have Desmond reveal the locations of the Pieces of Eden. By then the entire plot becomes one huge Mind Screw: Abstergo are the Knights Templar who secretly are behind every technological innovation EVER, the Assassins still exist and try to stop them, Lucy might or might not be one of them, and then there's the scribbling on the wall...
 * And in Assassin's Creed II, it goes meta. The entire Diabolus Ex Machina of Ezio's life turned out to be a gambit to
 * In Eternal Darkness, the 100% twist ending reveals.
 * In Diablo II, the fallen archangel Izual reveals that :the Dark Exile, the capturing of the Prime Evils in soulstones and the plot of Diablo I was a Batman Gambit planned by the Prime Evils and himself. This is no doubt a Retcon, though.
 * Laharl uses one in Episode 6 of Disgaea to lure all of his competitors for the Overlord's throne into Blair Forest, set up as a contest to wrest the "Deed to the Title of Overlord" from him. There is, of course, no deed, and after a mild hiccup in the form of a Hopeless Boss Fight, Laharl and co. defeat their enemies, and he gets to claim what (he thinks) is rightfully his.
 * Also used a chapter earlier by his vassal Etna, who was supposedly the mole working for another deamon trying to overthrow Larhal. Only when he finally calls her onto the carpet she reveals that not only has she been expecting him to betray her, she's hired his own underlings out from under him, and set things up so that Laharl would be more than eager to help her take out Maderas.
 * Also in Disgaea 1,
 * Mao's father (now a ghost) pulls off one of these in Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice by manipulating the Xanatos Gambit of Big Bad Aurum against him. The gambit worked by utilizing Almaz and Raspberyl's good hearts to get Mao to open up his own heart. To help further that along, his hidden right hand man Champloo (he reveals his true allegiances and how he manages to be so good at investigation at the end of the game) to guide Almaz to be a proper hero.
 * Strong Bads Cool Game for Attractive People Episode 2: Strong Badia the Free starts off with the King of Town placing Strong Bad under house arrest for not paying his new email tax: one Creamy Ding Snack Cake for every email sent or received, effective immediately and retroactively. Once Strong Bad breaks out, he launches into a massive screwball scheme to depose the King of Town, but as it turns out it was all a Batman Gambit the King of Town executed so that he could switch jobs with Strong Bad. The endgame involves turning the tables on the King of Town by levying an obscene tax against his precious snack cakes, inciting the King of Town to revolt against him and take his old job back.
 * Ghaleon of Lunar fame manipulates the heroes' altruistic tendencies through his immense popularity. this results in the hero giving him every single thing he wants.
 * The entirety of Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories is one giant Batman Gambit from Axel.
 * Unfortunately, while it worked great in the game, the long-term consequences of it blew up in his face.
 * The entire plot of Ghost Trick hinges on a Batman Gambit set by  to point Sissel in the right direction. Everything turns out according to plan, because.
 * Mephiles, the Big Bad of |Sonic the Hedgehog 2006, pulls one using Silver. He tells Silver that Sonic is the one who will destroy the future, counting on Silver being desperate enough to change the future that he'll jump on a chance to change it without questioning any of it.
 * In Soul Nomad and The World Eaters
 * In Jade Empire ; however, it is actually a double Batman Gambit;
 * In Half-Life 2 and especially Episode 2, it turns out that  We still don't know what is hoped to be achieved with all this, though.
 * He appears to be opperating by this scheme. He doesn't even hide the fact that he manipulates people into doing his dirty work for him but simply puts them into places and situations in which their personal goals will also help his plan along.
 * The World Ends With You has a few of these:
 * The entirety of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is one giant gambit courtesy of.
 * Some details make this a noteworthy example: short of magically discovering that the gambit exists, none of the Unwitting Pawns are even in a position to make it fail, and in fact, when one of them throws a Spanner in the Works that  is clearly not expecting or planning for, it actually ends up helping him anyway. This makes it seem like a Xanatos Gambit on the surface, but there is a failure condition that   would have no way of recovering from, and that's if.
 * God of War III revealed that the entire fucking series was a Batman Gambit designed by so that
 * from Starcraft uses Batman Gambits frequently. She ends up getting  to work with her even after , mainly by manipulating and eventually   their.
 * is another user of this, manipulating  into , as well as using   as an unknowing pawn in his scheme to.
 * is yet another possible example of this trope, getting  to help him out and shelter him both before and after he's.
 * The AI of Galactic Civilizations is smart enough to pull these on the player as shown in this after-action report.
 * Sigma's plans in Mega Man X 4 and 5 rely on the personalities of General, X, Zero and Maverick Hunter policy. Proto Man pulls off some impressive ones in Mega Man Megamix, too.
 * Cortex's entire plan in Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back hinged on Crash believing his story about needing the crystals to save the planet from a cataclysm, rather than trying to find a way out of the location that Cortex had brought him at the start of the game. Of course, Crash isn't particularly bright.
 * In Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, one can pull this off against the two Sith masters of the sith enclave on Korriban.
 * In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the Thalmor has peeled off the province of Hammerfell from the Empire in the wake of the Great War by means of demanding cession of the province in the terms of the White Gold Concordat, and is attempting to do so again with Skyrim by means of discontent over the banning of Talos worship.


 * Neo-Geo game Cyber-Lip plays a Batman Gambit on the player. The game makes you think you're fighting against an alien threat, when you're actually