Batman Gambit/Video Games

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Batman Gambits in Video Games include:

Subpages

Other Examples, that need sorting by genre

  • 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 as well as the Citadel, the largest, most advanced space station in existence to ensure that races develop along technological and cultural paths they desire. especially with regards to the Citadel, which invariably becomes the cultural center of any empire Then, possessing the technology to counter what they left behind, they quickly eliminate all life in the galaxy and melt down several million members of any species they find to make more Reapers. 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 become strong enough to destroy him.
    • 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 Lucifer himself. The Fiends had never stolen the candelabrum; the entire thing was set up as a training exercise to create a new demon that would be strong enough to lead the armies of Deep Amala in an war against God Himself, as well as a test to see if you had the fortitude to fully embrace your demonic side and become Deep Amala's champion.
  • From another Shin Megami Tensei game Persona 4 (which is about a murder mystery). Prodigy Detective Naoto Shirogane devises a plan to confirm his or rather her] suspicions that the police caught a copycat killer, not the real killer. she sets herself up as bait for the kidnapper, confident that the Investigation Team will rescue her. 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 Al-Mualim, who plans to have Altair kill all of the Templars who knew about the Piece of Eden, because he himself is a Templar plotting to take over the Holy Land for himself.
  • In Eternal Darkness, the 100% twist ending reveals that the entire game was just an absolute brilliant gambit run by the guardian god Mantorok so that it could eliminate the Eldritch Abominations it was tasked with sealing before it died.
  • 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, the entire game is a Batman gambit on the part of King Krichevskoy and Seraph Lamington, using Larharl and Flonne to unite the netherworlds, and even using Volcanus' traitorous nature.
    • 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 Ray, a.k.a Missile from an alternate timeline to point Sissel in the right direction. Everything turns out according to plan, because he needed Sissel's Ghost Tricks and his ability to travel through phone lines; Missile-Prime couldn't prevent any of the deaths with his Ghost Swap power, nor could he travel through phones.
  • 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 Rakasha travels with you, confident you will be able to defeat the other World Eaters (who he views as rivals), then waits until you are trapped and helpless before striking
  • In Jade Empire The entire game is one of these. He's called the Glorious Strategist for a very good reason...; however, it is actually a double Batman Gambit; The Water Dragon helps his plan, needing it to free herself from the Emperor, creating the conditions, including your Master killing you, whereby she can fully free herself.
  • In Half-Life 2 and especially Episode 2, it turns out that the G Man set up about everything that happened since the beginning of the first game. 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: Kitanji manipulates Neku into spreading his O-pins around the city, which are vital for his Assimilation Plot, Joshua manipulates Neku into becoming the best player and winning his game against Kitanji for him, and Hanekoma manipulates EVERYONE simply be relying on everyone to act according to their nature, teaching Neku about The Power of Friendship , letting the Idiot Hero ruin Konishi's carefully laid plans and giving The Starscream rope to hang himself with.
  • The entirety of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is one giant gambit courtesy of Shepherd. No, it's sure as hell not for a heroic cause.
    • 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 Shepherd 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 Shepherd would have no way of recovering from, and that's if the Russian's war against the United States had succeeded instead of being turned back.
  • God of War III revealed that the entire fucking series was a Batman Gambit designed by Athena so that she could gain the power of hope that she had in the first place but also kill all the other gods and destroy the world without implicating herself and become the one savior of mankind.
  • Kerrigan from Starcraft uses Batman Gambits frequently. She ends up getting the Protoss to work with her even after she's betrayed them repeatedly, mainly by manipulating and eventually abducting their Matriarch.
    • Duran is another user of this, manipulating Du Gaulle into killing his best friend, as well as using Kerrigan herself as an unknowing pawn in his scheme to create a Protos/Zerg hybrid.
    • Arcturas Mengsk is yet another possible example of this trope, getting Kerrigan and Jim Raynor to help him out and shelter him both before and after he's betrayed them on an epic scale.
  • 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. When Yathura comes to Revan to help her betray Uthar, you can agree to help her poison him. Revan can then turn around to Uthar, and tell him of Yuthara's plan. He will give Revan a device to help poison her. But then, the player can turn around and poison BOTH of them. Soon after finding the Star Map both Yuthara and Uthar stand there. After explaining some Sith lore, they suddenly open that they are now going to kill the other with Revan's help. It is then up to the player to decide who he wants to help, or he can even turn on both of them at once. Turning on bot actually gives the player the ability to deliver an awesome "The Reason You Suck" Speech, detailing how you used both's ignorance and arrogance on each other to weaken both of them so they'd be easier to kill, and it was all because they had not properly plotted a Xanatos Gambit.
  • 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 helping the aliens by destroying the last human resistance, as the twist ending makes clear.
  • Turtles in Time had a villainous example. The game starts with Shredder and Krang stealing the Statue of Liberty, his Evil Laugh during the broadcast practically daring the heroes to come after him. Naturally, they do, and are led right into his trap, where the villain creates a time warp intending to banish them into the past. Unfortunately for Shredder, however, he and his minions are caught in the same time warp, and the Turtles end up fighting them through five different time periods before finding the portal back home.
  • Alice is Dead. No, Alice is very much alive, she just wants you - and the Queen of Hearts - to think she is dead so she can ambush the villain and kill her. At the end, she succeeds.
Back to Batman Gambit
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Batman_Gambit/Video_Games?oldid=2051293"