Batman Gambit/Western Animation

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • An example from Batman: The Animated Series that wasn't planned by The Bat: An industrialist who is secretly going broke themes his new casino after The Joker, while all the time denying the connection. He expects that the Joker will be infuriated by his likeness being used without his permission, who will come destroy the place (and unfortunately, everyone whose inside), which will trigger his multi-million dollar insurance policy. Unfortunately, Batman tells the Joker all this mid-rampage and he decides a better revenge is offing him instead and taking the casino for himself.
    • Another such gambit involves a gangster and rival of the Joker dying and willing him 250 million dollars. On paper. What really happened was that only 10 million dollars of the inheritance was real. The rival was banking on the Joker's massive ego not allowing him to admit to being fooled, which makes things hard for the Joker when it's time to pay inheritence tax.
  • Justice League: A villainous version happens when Lex Luthor builds a city for the poor as a charity event and then places a huge machine under it, suspiciously whispering about it to his aide. Superman, who was invited to the event, thinks it's a bomb and wrecks half the city trying to destroy it. Turns out it was an experimental generator and now half the country hates the Justice League.
  • In WITCH, Nerissa uses a Batman Gambit to gain control of Kadma, one of the former Guardians, along with Kadma's Heart of Zamballa. After Will and Kadma have cornered Nerissa in a quarry, Nerissa allows Kadma to defeat her in a brief battle. Kadma then goes for Nerissa's Heart of Meridian, and this enables Nerissa to take both Hearts and gain control over Kadma's mind.
    • The last episodes of the second season of WITCH are revealed to be a Batman Gambit devised by Will. The gambit consisted of enlisting Phobos's help to take the Seal of Nerissa (after making him swear on the power of Candracar that he wouldn't keep it), and then, after his predictable betrayal, maneuvering him into attacking Candracar, at which point (because of his broken vow) he would forfeit the seal and everything he'd gained by it.
      • Of course, this plan failed due to one small snag - Phobos' right hand man Cedric having enough of Phobos' crap and eating him and the power right then and there!
  • Sideways, agent of Unicron and thus chaos in Transformers Armada is a master at this. First he encourages Hot Shot's already cocky nature, leading to him going to the Decepticon base on his own and getting captured. Then he works on Starscream's lack of self-esteem and Megatron's paranoia about his position to make them fight each other. The only error in his plan was that for all his manipulations and prodding of egos, Megatron never killed Starscream.
  • And in Transformers Animated, Optimus Prime pulls one of these. In "Decepticon Air", he tells Jazz (out loud) to get to the control panel and turn the decontamination chamber into a freezing one so they can lure the attacking 'Cons into it, but as he speaks, his shoulder badge flashes multiple times. Obviously, they overhear. Sentinel gets held hostage, and Optimus tells the jet twins to surrender and trust him, getting them all herded into the chamber. Turns out, similar to the Superman II example above, the flashing badge was "optical code" for Jazz to wire it so that everything outside the chamber is frozen. If the 'Cons had just used stasis cuffs, instead of deciding to be arrogant and mock Optimus, or if Sentinel hadn't shouted out that order, persuading the 'Cons to use him as a hostage, it all would have gone to the Pit.
    • And in "Endgame, Part 1", Megatron uses one for his three Omega Supreme clones. Knowing that with his personality, the clones would probably overthrow him, and also knowing that Starscream would try to get the activation code himself to use the clones, he bet on Lugnut pouncing on Starscream to stop him. It went perfectly - Lugnut got the codes, and Megatron got three walking, flying weapons of mass destruction (in more ways than one, it turned out) controlled by his most fanatically loyal Decepticons.
    • Long before either examples, in "Autoboot Camp", Shockwave (a.k.a Longarm) pulls one off. He knows that Bumblebee overheard his conversation with Megatron and that Bumblebee has asked for his help in exposing the spy: Wasp. After providing more evidence towards Wasp's "treachery" while guiding Bumblebee along the way, Shockwave plants evidence in Wasp's locker, setting him up take the fall. In the end, Wasp is arrested for treason, and Shockwave goes on to become Head of Cybertron Intelligence. If Bumblebee would've told Sentinel about the possible Decepticon spy, things wouldn't have went as well as it did.
  • Megatron's plan to reactivate the Nemesis to destroy the Maximals and the dormant Autobots is dependent on Tarantulus being his usual treacherous self, fixing the ship by himself in an effort to escape from Prehistoric Earth and leave everyone else behind. The plan would have failed if Tarantulus had not been killed with the Vok and had taken the ship himself, or if Tarantulus had never found the ship in the first place and repaired it.
    • Using the Nemesis wasn't Megatron's plan before Tarantulus was killed. Megatron was investigating Tarantulus's ruined lair for something that would be useful, since Tarantulus always had something up his sleeve that Megatron could use to his advantage. That something just happened to be the Decepticon Flagship
  • In the American Dad episode "Failure is not a Factory-Installed Option", after a car salesman messes with Stan's head to make him buy a car he doesn't want, Stan goes insane and starts living on the streets, depriving his family of their sole source of income (his paycheck). This forces them to shop at the same discount grocery store as the car salesman. Seeing the devastation his aggressive negotiations have caused, the salesman is shamed into giving Stan a much better deal on a car. Stan then whips off his crazy homeless guy clothes and reveals this sequence of events was all part of his master plan to get the better of the salesman. The fact that this plan led to his family nearly starving and his daughter prostituting herself for grocery money doesn't seem to concern him.
    • Considering how many cars he had been tricked into buying, it might have been more humiliating for the family otherwise.
    • In a later episode, "Widowmaker", Francine wishes Stan was more open with her like her neighbor Julie did with her husband Craig, who has been missing for three weeks. After some "therapy" with Roger, Stan becomes very open with Francine, including the fact that he killed Julie's husband for being a blabber-mouth by order of the CIA (and going into graphic detail). Then Francine accidentally tells Julie and has to knock her out so the CIA doesn't decide to kill Stan for the same reason as Craig. Then it all turns out this a plan by Stan and Craig so Francine will quit bothering Stan, and so Craig can get away from having to talk to Julie by moving to a tropical island and taking a new wife. God, Stan (and Craig) is an asshole.
    • In "The Scarlett Getter", Stan meets an old flame from his CIA training academy and he starts to re-develop feelings for her and ignore Francine. Francine is so irritated by this hookup, she tells Roger to put on a disguise to steal Scarlett from Stan. This works, but Stan wants to break up Roger and Scarlett and hires an alien hunter to capture Roger. Stan and the hunter arrive at the cabin where Roger and Scarlett are planning to have sex, where it turns out that Scarlett is an alien hunter herself. She knew Stan had an alien in his house before thir "chance" encounter each other and used Stan to get to Roger and dissect him.
  • In the penultimate episode of Danny Phantom, Valerie tricks Danielle into leading her to Danny so she can capture "two Danny Phantoms for the price of one."
    • That one was nothing compared to the one Clockwork the Time Ghost pulled in The Movie, "The Ultimate Enemy". Knowing everything that would happen, he manipulated events which lead to Danny encountering the evil monster he could become so he could overcome it, change his future, gain his sister as a confidant, and develop his most powerful ability ten years early, while at the same time, pull his evil self out of time so he couldn't harm his own timeline anymore. The only side effect is now that if he ever gets loose, he'll be free to travel into Danny's time without anything to teether him.
  • In the third season opener of ReBoot, Mainframe security forces have been shot out of the sky by Megabyte's military and Dot needs the few remaining to return to the Principle Office. To get enough time to lower their shields and get the survivors back inside, Dot tells them to move into a single file line to approach the hanger bay. Such a tactic would be insane, but Dot knew Megabyte's military tactics. The enemy forces took position on both sides of the allied forces and prepared to shoot them down in the crossfire. With the enemy fighters in neat little groups of their own, the good guys were able to lower shields, gun down the attacking forces with the base turrets and bring in the survivors all in one move. It didn't work out quite as clean as on paper, though.
  • Bugs Bunny demonstrates his mastery of the Batman Gambit in many cartoons, but rarely comes up against a worthy opponent, and will inevitably use simple tricks, like misdirection and "pronoun trouble", to manipulate his enemies.
  • On a handful of occasions, the characters in Code Lyoko would use one of these to force XANA to act in a manner they desired, namely when they were out of options. XANA wants Aelita alive from Seasons 2 to 4, so they would often put her in harm's way to force its hand. This was most memorable when Jérémie ordered Odd to shoot Aelita in episode "Saint Valentine's Day", where devirtulization would have meant death for her.
  • Magneto brilliantly pulls 95% of one in X-Men Evolution's Season 2 finale "Day of Reckoning", manipulating four different factions -- the X-Men, the Brotherhood, Bolivar Trask's private army, and his Acolytes in order to: reveal to the world the existence of mutants, out Trask's group and destroy their Sentinel prototype, brand the X-Men as fugitives, and severely drain his enemies' resources. Only one unaccounted-for factor -- his daughter, Wanda Maximoff -- prevents it from going perfectly.
  • In the G.I. Joe, "Mass Device" story, GI Joes stages a phony internal message telling of their supposed surrender to Cobra, successfully banking on their enemy intercepting it and being fooled by what they are listening in on. As a result, Joe buys itself enough time to hunt down the last of the elements it needs; however, Destro, although fooled himself to a degree, is not taking any chances and proceeds to retrieve the same materials himself.
  • G.I. Joe Renegades features James "Soon to Be Destro" McCullen attempting to pull this off by baiting the Joes into attacking Cobra so he can pressure Cobra for a major contract. Backfires horrifically as he literally did not know who he was dealing with.
  • In the season two finale of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Azula and her two minions dress up as Kyoshi warriors in order to infiltrate Ba Sing Se and get in with the Earth King in order to get information about the current state of affairs in the city. She then has her minions pretend to let slip that they are Fire Nation in front of the Dai Li in order to get them to capture her and bring her before Long Feng (their recently imprisoned leader) so he can blackmail her into helping the Dai Li organise a coup against the Earth King. While organising the Dai Li, she uses her charisma and intimidation to leave them in awe and fear of her. When Long Feng (inevitably) tries to betray her and finds the Dai Li won't go through with it, she points out that they are intimidated enough of her that they'll just stand back and see what happens, before giving a Hannibal Lecture to Long Feng which gets him to submit to her. To top it all off, she gets Zuko to help her take on Aang and Katara, by dangling the first actual, tangible opportunity to fulfill his mission and restore his honour. Thus, she with the help of only two warriors (who aren't Benders) and her own wits, she manages to achieve in a matter of days what whole armies couldn't in a whole century.
    • Zuko's attempt to use this Gambit against Azula in the Grand Finale is brutally subverted. He attempts to bait the already insane Azula into shooting lightning at him so he can redirect it back at her. Azula, being Dangerously Genre Savvy, chooses instead to shoot the lightning at Katara instead.
  • Phineas and Ferb
    • In the Christmas Episode, Santa Claus pulls off a beautiful Batman Gambit, delivering a device to Doofenschmertz that would enable him to brand all of Danville as Naughty, while at the same time sending Perry the Platypus a CD with a note sharp enough to shatter said device. When all of Danville is branded naughty, and it looks like Santa Claus won't put in an appearance, Phineas, Ferb, and their friends team up with a couple of elves, who have come to investigate why a whole town would be labeled as naughty. It turns out to be a deliberate act to allow everyone to get their Christmas wish. Doofenshmertz finds a reason to "hate" Christmas, a villainous area he felt he was deficient in, Buford performs a selfless act, thus allowing all of his friends to see him as nice. Baljeet delivers a gift to a cute girl, thus earning a kiss from her, Candace finds out that she really does know Jeremy quite well, as she got him the perfect gift, and Phineas got to be just like his hero, Santa. Ferb got a harmonica, but it wasn't really intrinsic to the Gambit.
    • In the movie, Candace pulls one off against the workings of her universe, by trying to show Mom the giant robot army attacking Danville, knowing that anything massive her brothers are involved in will somehow go away before Mom sees it.
  • On Johnny Test, Johnny himself has managed to pull off a few Batman gambits, such as going without bathing just so his family, after multiple failed attempts to get him cleaned up, will give in just so he can get a water park for his best friend's birthday, or the time he wanted to get his sister's time machine so after failing the first time, he had Dukey in the future take it while the family was having dinner then come back to pick im up. Dukey even notes that he's not as dumb as you might think.
  • In Turtles Forever, the Mirage Turtles lure the 2003 Shredder out of his Technodrome by calling him a coward. It works, and Shredder literally jumps into an ambush, not just by the Mirage Turtles, but the other Ninja Turtles that he thought he killed earlier.

2003 Leonardo: If there's one constant in The Multiverse, it's the Shredder's big fat ego!

  • In the two-part pilot of My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, main character Twilight Sparkle's mentor, Princess Celestia, sends her to Ponyville to make some friends, right after she warned her about an ancient prophecy of doom. Turns out, her mentor predicted this. Thanks to her understanding of friendship in the second part, Twilight and her new friends saved the world.
    • Parodied in My Little Pony: Camaraderie Is Supernatural, in which Princess Celestia's letter to Twilight includes the post-script "This totally isn't a thinly-veiled Batman Gambit meant to prevent the impending Pony Apocalypse. For serious."
    • Princess Celestia continues to use some variant of this in pretty much every major appearance thereafter, reasons varying from trying to teach Twilight and friends something, to using Twilight and friends as pawns to get out of having to sit through a boring soiree.
      • To playing pranks on inattentive waiters to screwing with the animal lover's head (but at least she made the bird apologize)...she really loves this trope.
    • And let's not forget the second one she pulled. She figured Discord would break out, so she had Twilight Sparkle stay in Ponyville, writing letters to her, explaining what she learned about friendship. When Discord comes and takes over Ponyville, Celestia sends all the letters to Twilight Sparkle in order to snap her out of her Heroic BSOD. Put simply, it works.
  • In one episode of a Cartoon Network Latin American bumper, Aquaman and Friends Action Hour, Lex Luthor tries to sabotage Aquaman's kids show by making an overly complicated scheme that will make a tractor, a mortal cobra, and a tractor driven by the mortal cobra (among other things) suddenly assault the live stage, and activates when Aquaman plays the guitar in an announced singalong. Lex even states that "it. cannot. fail!". At the end it fails because Aquaman never actually plays the guitar and do playback instead. A Janitor at the night, however....
  • An episode of Jimmy Two Shoes had Lucius pull off a rather impressive one to prank The Rodeo Clowns.
  • In Spawn: The Animated Series, we find out during the third and final season that Al Simmons is the victim of a Batman Gambit by Maleborgia. Instead of being used to lead hells army, he's actually used as a sperm donor to impregnate Wanda with a demon seed - who'll be the real human general of hells army.
  • In The Simpsons episode "Sideshow Bob Roberts" Lisa figures she can get Sideshow Bob to admit he rigged the election by insinuating he was a lackey to Birch Barlow.

Bob: Only I could have executed such a masterpiece of electoral fraud. And I have the records to prove it! Here, just look at these -- each one a work of Machiavellian art!

  • In the South Park episode "Spookyfish", the boys meet the evil Eric Cartman from a Mirror Universe. Being the opposite of the real Cartman, he is kind and helpful. Cartman rips off his counterpart's Beard of Evil after he finds out that Stan and Kyle are going to send him to the other universe in favor of evil Cartman. When Stan and Kyle are trying to decide which Cartman is the one they want to get rid of, one insists that they both have to go for the greater good. They zap the other Cartman because they know the real Cartman would never say that. However, it was the regular Cartman who said that; he knew that they would fall for it.
  • Doug has one in "Doug's Big News". Roger gets everyone kicked off the news show by taking credit for the video tribute the class made for Mr. Bone. They figure getting him a present wouldn't help them get back in his good graces because Roger would take credit for it again. Doug takes advantage of this and when Roger takes the next gift, Roger gets in trouble for giving Mr. Bone pink underwear.
  • In the Duck Dodgers episode "Corporate Pigfall", the Eager Young Space Cadet becomes CEO of a Mega Corp, and Dodgers's new cadet is Egghead Jr. Dodgers then enlists Egghead's help in getting the Cadet back. The Cadet eventually quits Macrovast, and ensures his position is vacant by making Egghead Jr. the new CEO. The final scene is of Egghead writing on his notepad "Exactly as I planned."
  • In one episode of The Cleveland Show, Donna breaks her leg and guilt trips Cleveland into taking care of her and the household. Cleveland does everything he can to please Donna and she takes advantage of his by making him come up to her room for every little thing she wants. Cleveland's friends notices how soft he has gotten and they confront Donna, thinking she's not really disabled at all, and try to prove she is faking it by pushing her down a flight of stairs. Donna turns out to be just fine as she got up at the last minute and admits she is pretending to be crippled because she knows that Cleveland will push himself to take care of her since he feels guilty about not helping out more. However, Cleveland knew all along that Donna was faking her injury and was working hard to make her feel guilty about having him do all the work. Once Donna got "better", she sees Cleveland is still busting his ass to please her, so she demands to resume being the housewife of the family. Cleveland pretends to agree and once Donna is working hard at home, she then realizes she was being played with all along.
  • In Gargoyles, the entire scenario with Derek Maze, Elisa Maza's brother, was one big Batman Gambit by David Xanatos. There were many times Xanatos plans for Derek could have failed. All Derek really had to do was trust and believe in his own sister's warnings about him. Elisa even gets Fox on tape admitting that Xanatos had shady plans for her brother. She gives the tape to Derek, but he clearly doesn't listen to it. Episodes later, (after the damage was done) Derek/Talon finds out the hard way he was nothing but a science experiment, and a personal stab at Elisa Maza. David Xanatos, himself, even criticized his scientist, Anton Sevarius, for being a bad actor - something Derek should have noticed being an ex-cop. "You always overplay your hand, Anton."
  • Slade forces Robin to be his apprentice in Teen Titans. He does this by infecting the other Titans with Nanoscopic Probes, which he can activate if Robin doesn't obey. When he is about to destroy them, Robin decides to infect himself with the same probes. He tells Slade that if he loses his friends, Slade loses his apprentice. Slade angrily destroys the controller.
  • In an episode of Arthur, Arthur refused to take D.W. to a science museum. The next day, D.W. shows off her own science exhibit...which includes such explanations as "H2O can be made by combining O (oxygen) with H (hose)" and "the sun turns off at night." So, Arthur and the Brain finally take her to prove her wrong, only for D.W. to reveal that her whole plan was to be taken to the museum.
  • In the Recess movie Recess: School's Out, Mikey begins to sing a song. He expects that the guards standing outside Third Street School will attempt to stop him from doing so (even though Mikey isn't actually attempting to enter the building), and will fall into the pit that Sam and Dave dug a few inches away from him. The plan works splendidly.
  • Most episodes of Inspector Gadget go like this: Gadget gets an assignment from Da Chief which involves foiling one of Dr. Claw's plans, he stumbles into said plan accidentally, Penny secretly helps him, plan is foiled, Gadget gets credit for it (sometimes confused as to how), villains are arrested (except Dr. Claw himself, who always escapes), roll end credits. In one episode, however, Claw decides to take advantage of Gadget's knack for showing up to eliminate him. He instructs a sneaky agent named the Rat to start committing robberies in one city in a prearranged route, that when traced on a map, spell out M.A.D. Claw's intent is for Gadget to figure out the pattern and arrive at one location ahead of time, where a trap will be sprung. At face value, the flaw in this plan is Claw's ignorance of the real reason Gadget always shows up, but here's the kicker — this plan even fools Penny, who nearly inadvertently leads her uncle to his doom with her usual "help him secretly" routine. She manages to bail him out, fortunately, and the episode concludes with Gadget even more confused that he usually is.
Back to Batman Gambit
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Batman_Gambit/Western_Animation?oldid=2051372"