Batman Gambit/Web Comics

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Ephemural orchestrates one of these in TwoKinds. He/she/it erased Trace Legacy's memories in order to prevent him from killing a young Keidran girl named Flora, and then incited a number of incidents where Trace's Super-Powered Evil Side emerged, generating mistrust between them, in order to eventually force Flora to return to her people and complete an arranged marriage with the prince of the Wolf Clan, thus uniting the Tiger and Wolf Clans into a force strong enough to resist the expansionistic human empire. The only thing that saved him/her/it from crossing over into Gambit Roulette territory, is the fact that he/she/it has displayed literally divine powers, and could thus conceivably have arranged every apparently coincidental incident. Unfortunately for him/her/it, somebody else had a stake in the Xanatos Gambit as well...
  • In Looking for Group, it has been suggested that Cale's trials from his time in Kethenecia of the past to his return to the now-abandoned city with a group of followers is apparently a Gambit executed by the Archmage in order to create a new age for the city and prepare Cale to be a proper king. Technically speaking, it was supposed to be a Xanatos Gambit, but a few things went wrong. He confirmed it. And ditto for Richard.
  • In Freefall, Sam's Gambit is NOT having a Gambit, knowing that the people he's scamming will think he DOES have one, ergo thinking one up for him, in which he'll just have to show up to reap the rewards of.
  • In Chapter 3 of The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, most of the... somewhat unlikely events early on are orchestrated by Fox News, in order to get some interesting stories. However, their plans are thwarted by another Batman Gambit, carried out by a Fox News weatherman that doesn't want raptor-riding banditos and whatnot distracting people from the fantastic weather they're going to have this coming weekend. The title main character is not pleased.
  • The Order of the Stick's Big Bad Xykon does this to get the location of the MacGuffin. Poor, deluded Miko never even realizes she's been had.
    • More recently, the three fiends played V's hunger for power, revenge, and personal glory quite magnificently against V.
    • A one page joke serves as an excellent example of the trope: This page shows Hayley dividing the loot. She has given herself nothing but five completely valueless rocks. The others suspect her of trying to cheat them out of valuable artifacts. They make her redivide the loot so she gets more gold, and loses out entirely on the rocks. The rocks actually are valueless -- she wanted more gold.
    • Xykon pulls one of these in the climax of Start of Darkness. Redcloak's brother Right-Eye is obsessed with destroying him, and has bought a magic knife that can deliver a sneak attack to an undead creature. Xykon knew about this, and protected himself accordingly. However, he still lets Right-Eye attack, knowing full well that Redcloak will kill his own brother rather than jeopardize The Plan. And now Xykon has proof that Redcloak will not betray him, will protect his phylactery, and will sink to any depths to see The Plan come to fruition; otherwise the sacrifice he made would be meaningless.
  • The commanding members of Starscream's Brigade do this a lot in the Insecticomics. Starscream pulled his biggest Batman when Thrust, unbeknownst to himself still under the virus-induced influence of Sideways, had the Constructicons build a Hydra Cannon to power up the Fallen. Starscream knew all about this and let it happen. However, at the last minute he swapped the Mini-Cons used to power the cannon with the knockoff Mexicons, which rather than amplifying the Fallen's power completely drained it. This left the servants of Unicron helpless to avoid having their afts kicked by the Brigade.
  • Schlock Mercenary features this often, as a common tactic of the near-omniscient AI "Petey". He once withdrew from an interstellar war against an entire species to deal with a bigger problem, because he knew exactly how his opponents would react.

Enemy officer: Suuuure, the quadrant looks abandoned. It always does, up until the screaming starts.

    • As AI discussed, Tagon have intimidated into running the only U.P.A. ship that was actual threat to the Toughs' little fleet. Toughs want to deal with the attackers without vaporizing them, since U.P.A. are little more than local hooligans set up against a vastly superior force to give pretext for more official actions against the mercenaries. One guy was really asking for bodily harm, but this can be done in boarding action.
  • Hawk from City of Reality managed to outwit an enemy capable of Mental Time Travel, and could deduce which iteration of his plan was going on from the baddie's initial reaction.
  • Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal had a great issue where the Joker pulls a Batman Gambit on the Batman
  • Buck Godot manages a most excellent one at the end of the PSmith storyline.
  • In Oglaf (very NSFW comic, generally), this is parodied expertly by an overly clever man.
  • One of the main characters of Blur the Lines (also a very NSFW comic), Rick (who is a chubby chaser), is very good at luring overweight straight men into sexual encounters without making them realize he is doing so, such as when he convinced a straight man to give him oral sex to get back at his girlfriend [1], or when he bet a man at PAX that he couldn't roll four evens out of ten. (For losing that bet, Rick had to give oral sex to every fat man in the room.)
  • Lampshaded in Goblins. When Thaco challenges Dellyn to a duel, both of them know that Thaco has some sort of trap planned. Nonetheless, Dellyn accepts when Thaco points out that the only alternative is for Dellyn to order his soldiers to kill Thaco, and bear the reputation of not being able to kill a single old, frail goblin.
  • Doc Scratch on Homestuck is a Manipulative Bastard whose chosen MO involves "nudging" characters down paths they most likely would've taken anyways. For example, he exploits Vriska's spiteful nature and suggests that she kill Aradia in revenge for summoning the spirits of Vriska's victims to haunt her.
  • Collar 6. This wasn't intentionally set-up, but Trina knows that Michelle would never let Butterfly take Laura alone, and will sign herself over to protect her.
  • The Think Tank pull one off in a board game in this Sequential Art strip.
  • In Darken, Baal targets the loved ones of Gort and Mink by taking possession of Gort's brother Tyr and murdering Mink's mother solely to make them angry. Then he "allows" a spy to be captured and has it leak false information implying that Baal's daughter is in Falloakes. Said girl is actually the daughter of Asmodeus, the most powerful Archdevil of them all. If Jill hadn't been there to reveal the truth to Gort and Mink, they would have unwittingly ruined whatever plans Asmodeus had for the surface and sparked a war between Gort's patron Mephistopheles and Asmodeus. Leaving Baal relatively squeaky clean and in a position to expand his own power base while his archrivals duked it out.
  • Sluggy Freelance: Riff pulls one of these--on himself, sort of--to bring Zoe back.
  • The Non-Adventures of Wonderella has the protagonist invoking it after the fact here...

Wonderita: "Did you MEAN for this to happen?"
Wonderella: "If anyone asks, I'm gonna say I did."
 

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