8,294
edits
Divide and Conquer: Difference between revisions
no edit summary
m (update links) |
HLIAA14YOG (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
||
| (4 intermediate revisions by 3 users not shown) | |||
Line 17:
* In the ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]'' manga's "Death-T" arc, one of the challenges is a room being gradually filled with huge falling blocks. It's intended to force the heroes to think only of themselves rather than trying to save their friends.
* In ''[[Monster (manga)|Monster]]'', one of Johan's most common strategies is to get different groups of people to fight against one another. {{spoiler|In the finale, he has guns distributed around an entire town and gets everyone to start shooting everyone else.}}
* Naraku from ''[[Inuyasha]]'' tried several times to put Sango against the others by threatening the life ([[Undead|or some such]]) of her little brother. The first time he managed to make her steal Inuyasha's [[BFS|Tessaiga]], but she's gotten wiser since. He also uses various tricks to physically split up the team so he can take them out one by one.
* Team Rocket uses this plan a few times to catch the [[Pokémon (anime)|Pokémon]] of the episode and almost get away with it until the last minute.
* The strategy [[Code Geass|Schneizel]] uses twice on Lelouch: {{spoiler|first, to make him believe Suzaku betrayed him by having him arrested during the meeting, and the second time by getting the Black Knights to betray him}}.
* The description above says "contrast [[Enemy Mine]]", but in [[Soul Eater]], Medusa actually managed to
* In [[Baka and Test]], Class F utilizes this against Class A during a summoner war. They use favors gained from defeating the other classes, or deception in the case of Class C, to have them wear down Class A before the fight. Class F nearly succeeds with it, until the school starts to break down, causing the Class F rep to be distracted momentarily.
* Aizen's plan in the Soul Society arc incorporates large amounts of this. He has Ichimaru let Ichigo's crew escape, so the thirteen squads spend their time and energy fighting them. At the same time he manipulates Rukia's execution to cause splits within the thirteen squads, and after faking his own death manipulates Hinamori into attacking Ichimaru, Kira and Hitsugaya. All of these things manage to divert attention from his machinations, and if it wasn't for [[Spanner in the Works|Ichigo doing a little better than expected]] and Captain Unohana realising something was wrong with his 'dead' body, Aizen's plan would have succeeded, he would have escaped scot free and a significant amount of his enemies would be dead.
Line 34:
* This is a key element in ''[[A Fistful of Dollars]]''
** ''[[A Fistful of Dollars]]'' got the plot from Kurosawa's ''[[Yojimbo]]'' which in turn got it from a 1930 gangster film called ''Roadhouse Nights'' which was based on [[Dashiell Hammett]]'s novel ''Red Harvest''.
** The same plot was used in the western ''[[Django]]'' and ''[[Last Man Standing (graphic novel)|Last Man Standing]]''.
* Used in ''[[Serenity]]'', where Mal pits {{spoiler|the Alliance and the Reavers}} against each other to buy enough time to {{spoiler|broadcast the secret of Miranda to the entire verse}}.
* And in ''[[Lucky Number Slevin]]'', which is unfortunately a huge spoiler.
* ''[[James Bond (film)|James Bond]]'' has a lot of it. Three deal with USSR x USA, ''[[From Russia with Love]]'' - source of the page quote -, ''[[You Only Live Twice]]'' and ''[[The Spy Who Loved Me]]'' (first two are Blofeld-lead SPECTRE).
** ''[[Tomorrow Never Dies]]'' has the villain trying to get [[World War Three]] between the UK and China, just to get broadcasting rights in the latter.
** This also seems to be QUANTUM's strategy in the [[Quantum of Solace|new movies]]: get Bond so paranoid about his superiors, and so confused by the abrupt shift into a [[World Half Empty]] with a [[Black and Grey Morality]], he ends up failing to defeat them.
* Also, [[Dark Knight Trilogy|the Joker]]'s strategy: get Batman so riled up with the [[Black and Grey Morality]], fighting the police ''and'' trying to redeem Harvey Dent, he can barely take on the Joker.
Line 52:
** And they do follow up in the book as well, only instead of bribing an air force commander to attack a U.S. Ship, they pose as officers in the red army and trick a tank brigade in East Berlin into attacking an American base in West Berlin. They are also unwittingly helped by an American mole in the Politburo whose been feeding the U.S. false information in the hopes of destabilizing the current government in the USSR so he can grab power himself.
* Inverted in the Asimov's short story: ''In a Good Cause''. where the wars amongst humans actually made them stronger, which gives them the upper hand against the united aliens.
** Also inverted the same with the aliens of Harry Turtledove's [[Worldwar]] series, as their millennia-old unifications means their technology has been purposely stagnated by the government to prevent disruptive changes in society, while humans being disunited and constantly at war with each other means we're able to change much quicker.
Line 60:
* The number of times they've done this in ''[[Power Rangers]]'' is beyond counting. Often more than once in the same season.
* Michael pulls one of these about every third episode of ''[[Burn Notice]]''.
* The ''[[Twilight Zone]]'' episode " {{spoiler|The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street}}", aliens do this, taking advantage of the fact that [[Humans Are the Real Monsters|Humans Are Bastards]]. {{spoiler|An ordinary street, in an ordinary town, suffers a sudden and inexplicable power outage, with a few suspicious items still functioning. The neighborhood gets together and comes to the somewhat strange conclusion that alien invaders are messing with things, and then start accusing each other of being in league with the invaders.}} End result: mass hysteria. Cut to two [[Human Alien
** The whole thing, of course, was an allegory for [[Red Scare|the McCarthy witch hunts]].
* In [[Stargate Atlantis]], McKay reactivates the Replicators' programming that causes them to attack the Wraith. Unfortunately, it backfires a bit when the Replicators determine that the most efficient way wipe out the Wraith is to eliminate [[I'm a Humanitarian|their food supply]].
Line 79:
== Videogames ==
* Very common tactic players use in video games that allow [[NPC
* {{spoiler|Sturm}} attempts to do this in the first [[Advance Wars]]. He tried to get the nations of Orange Star, Blue Moon, Green Earth and Yellow Comet to engage in a brutal war that would leave all sides devastated, so he could sweep in with his own forces and conquer all of Wars World.
* Kerrigan does this to ''{{spoiler|[[Crowning Moment of Awesome|everyone]]}}'' in ''[[
* ''[[Devil May Cry]] 3'': {{spoiler|Jester/Arkham let Vergil, Dante and Lady fight between themselves while even pretending to be dead so he could attack all of them when it was necessary: when Lady's blood needed to be spilled so he could unlock the path to the Demon World}}.
* Any Pit player worth his weight in salt does this as well when deploying [[Limit Break|Palutena's Army]] in ''[[Super Smash Bros Brawl]]''. It's one of the few Final Smashes that allows the user to move and act freely with his own moveset during its execution. The reason it falls here is that the Centurions are dangerous in their own right, and the player has to choose to either focus on dodging them or dodging Pit, though a skilled player can do both for the most part.
* By the end of ''[[Kingdom Hearts II]]'', Sora is too busy dealing with the Nobodies and Organization XII to properly deal with Maleficent, Pete and the Heartless.
Line 89:
* In ''[[Silent Storm]]'', Thor's Hammer is trying exactly that with the Allies and the Axis. While they didn't start the war, they are taking advantage or it by supplying both sides with advanced weapons, while keeping the best goodies for themselves.
* In ''[[Haegemonia]]: Legions of Iron'', the Darzok use this method to break up their enemies. They convince a Kariak general to rebel against the Human-Kariak alliance, allowing them to build up their forces while the Kariak fight among each other.
* Probably one of the better ways to deal with enemies in [[
* In [[The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim]], this is what the Thalmor's tactics are presumed to be {{spoiler|and confirmed when you find out that Ulfric Stormcloak is a Thalmor asset}}. In the Great War, the Thalmor, fought to a standstill by the Empire, made a peace treaty with terms that the provinces would never agree to (ceding half of Hammerfell and outlawing Talos worship). As of the time of Skyrim's story, Hammerfell has seceded from the Empire and Skyrim erupted into civil war, meaning that the Empire is now a much weaker target. Despite this, they don't want {{spoiler|Ulfric to actually win, but merely wish for the Civil War to weaken both the Empire and Skyrim.}}
* In [[Neverwinter Nights 2]], there is a section where a group of Fire Giants want to kill a nearby Dragon and the Dragon wants to kill the Fire Giants that have been harassing it. They both request your aid to deal with the other, and they both have something valuable that you may wish to take (for the Fire Giants, it's a quest item. For the Dragon, it's a massive pile of gold). No matter who you ally with, in the end you're given the option to betray both of them and let them duke it out with each other. Whichever side survives will be in a weakened state, thus allowing you to easily finish them off.
Line 106:
* Grodd did this with the [[Justice League]] in "Secret Society".
** Also in ''[[Justice League]]'', we are treated to a [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]] when {{spoiler|Batman takes out the Injustice League like this. ''While chained up in the basement''.}}
* Shego manages to pull this off in the ''[[Kim Possible]]'' [[Made for TV Movie]] "A Sitch In Time" by having Ron's mother get a job that requires their family to move.
* Done (as a reference to the Beatles, once again!) in an episode of ''[[Powerpuff Girls]]''.
* Not only was this the plot of the first episode of ''[[Teen Titans (animation)|Teen Titans]]'', it was also the title!
Line 115:
== Real Life ==
* Divide and Conquer has been a tried and true tactic of empires throughout history. [[The Other Wiki]] has [[wikipedia:Divide and rule|a more comprehensive explanation]] of Divide and Rule and its uses.
** This was the favorite tactic of Julius Caesar, arguably the [[Trope Namer]]. His motto was Divide et Impera, which translates to "Divide and Rule".<ref>or "Divide and Order", but that makes significantly less sense</ref>
*** This has always been characteristic of Roman conquest, since their early wars within Italy. Once conquered or "allied" a city-state would be bound by contract to Rome and forbidden to form any kind of alliance (including marriage) with their former allies. By the time Rome controlled the whole of Italy, they had over 150 contracts with various states, none of which had any formal links to one another other than as allies of Rome.
** The war between the [[Eastern Roman Empire]] and Sassanid Persia that took place from 602 to 628 weakened both countries so much that the Arabs were able to invade and conquer all of Persia and half of the Eastern Roman Empire. The Arabs did not actually instigate the conflict, as they were still a disorganized bunch of tribes, but they took advantage of the situation, [[Outside Context Villain|being united under Islam soon afterwards]].
Line 126:
** Bismarckian Germany did the same thing in the late 19th century, keeping France isolated from their natural allies, Russia and the UK.
** [[Red October]] and the fall of the Czarist and Provisional Russian governments was effectively due to Germany successfully using public discontent to undermine the power of the Pro-Allies factions in Russia in the hopes of reaction against them that would open the door to a German-dominated Eastern Europe.
** One of the reasons Japan was able to conquer large portions of China in the 1930s - the Communist Chinese wanted their own government defeated even more than Japan did, while the ruling Chinese Nationalists were conversely so preoccupied with trying to stamp them out (not to mention being hopelessly corrupt, incompetent and unpopular-those going together) they caved easily before the Japanese.
** The German-led Axis took advantage of this during their invasion of Yugoslavia in WWII by rallying the country's neighbors to help invade and by arming the radicalized minorities (most notably the Croats with some Slovene, local Hungarian, and Albanian support) against the Serbian-dominated Royal government. It worked devastatingly well - [[Gone Horribly Right|probably too well]], if the subsequent bloodshed and the resulting rise of the Partisans and the Chetniks and their effective tying up of hundreds of thousands of Axis troops shows. Some of the Croatian groups the Nazis stirred up were also such fanatically brutal killers that ''[[Even Evil Has Standards|even SS death squads were sickened by them]]'', and left the Serbs burning for revenge...
** The Soviets tried to do this throughout their history (and started before the Soviet Union even existed yet) by trying to drive wedges between their enemies, whoever they might be at the time. In [[World War
*** This was countered by United States opening up (relatively) friendly relations with China despite their ideological incompatibility, as each considered the Soviets to be the greater threat (America seeing them as such because the USSR was simply more powerful than China, and China because the USSR was literally right next door to them).
* Large companies have been known to do this as well. During the [[wikipedia:Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886|Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886]], [[Railroad Baron]] Jay Gould allegedly boasted that he could "hire one half of the working class to kill the other half."
Line 137:
[[Category:The Plan]]
[[Category:Plots]]
[[Category:
| |||