Batman Gambit/Western Animation: Difference between revisions

* In the third season opener of ''[[Re Boot (Animation)|Re Boot]]'', 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 [[Karmic Trickster|tricks]], like misdirection and "pronoun trouble", to manipulate his enemies.

* On a handful of occasions, the characters in ''[[Code Lyoko (Animation)|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 the Hostage|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 (Animation)|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 -- [[Scarlet Witch|his daughter, Wanda Maximoff]] -- prevents it from going perfectly.

* In the ''[[South Park (Animation)|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 (Animation)|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 one episode of ''[[The Cleveland Show (Animation)|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, {{spoiler|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 (Animation)|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. {{spoiler|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."}}