Gambit Roulette: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

A convoluted [[Plan]] that relies on events completely within the realm of chance yet comes off without a hitch.

If your first reaction to seeing the plan unfold is "There is no way that you ''planned'' that!", then it's roulette.

 

 

If, as part of [[retcon]]ning in a new [[Big Bad]], everything up to then (including the supposed successes of the heroes against the old villains) is all part of a new scheme, its's [[Arc Welding]]. Also often the justification of the [[Omniscient Morality License]]; their control over events is supposedly total.

 

{{examples}}

* ''[[Death Note]]'' is essentially Gambit Roulette: the series. The most impressive is the plan that [[Wham! Episode|changes the course of the entire series]]—Light arranging {{spoiler|L's death}} while coming off completely above suspicion—which involves an extended [[Memory Gambit]], at the end of which every element needed to be exactly in the place they were in order to work.

** Including such utterly unpredictable details as a cop Light didn't even know prior to the [[Memory Gambit]] missing when he shot at the temporary owner of the Death Note. The plan required Light to kill Higuchi while holding the Death Note, so that he could reclaim ownership of it and make the memory restoration permanent. Had the bullet been just an inch to the left, Higuchi would've died too soon and whoever picked up the Death Note first (most likely the cop who shot him) would become its official owner. And Light's memory of being Kira would be gone forever.

* In ''[[Bleach]]'', most of Sosuke Aizen's ridiculously longwinded plans rely on this, which is odd given that he's easily powerful enough to get what he wants via brute force. Later on, this gets brought to its logical conclusion: Aizen claims ''the entire plot'' (or at least Ichigo's role) has apparently been ''exactly as planned''. It's never fully expanded on, so it's possible he was just lying to mess with Ichigo. Also, Kisuke Urahara engages in Gambit Roulettes as well, to the point where the series can be reduced to these two [[Chessmaster]]s dueling one another in a case of Aizen's "just as planned" attitude versus Urahara's "just as expected" attitude.

** And everything both of them planned was secretly part of Clow Reed's plan, which also incorporated the entire plot of [[Cardcaptor Sakura]]. Please note that Clow has been dead for centuries.

** It should also be noted that every member of the initial party is somehow working for Yuuko or Fei Wong. All of them had been previously manipulated by the two [[The Chessmaster|chessmasters]] into the circumstances which led them to Yuuko's shop. Only one of them knows which side he's playing for from the beginning, but even his memories were changed to better serve the [[Big Bad]].

* The titular character in the manga/anime ''[[Akagi]]'' used a Gambit Roulette on the blind player Ishikawa that came out of nowhere so fast, that despite everything adding up, it is still hard to believe that everything was on purpose, especially considering his inner thoughts seemed rather random during the match.

* While ''[[Code Geass]]'''s main draw was the [[Gambit Speed Chess]], there's the time Lelouch checkmated Schneizel. Earlier in the series, he'd recorded a fake conversation to make Mao think Lelouch was really speaking to him. It worked, mostly because it was broadly focused. Lelouch never went into any specifics and Mao was too obsessed with C.C. to fully focus. Lelouch just had to say things about C.C. that would rile Mao. But when he did it again with Schneizel, Lelouch somehow knew [[The Tape Knew You Would Say That|the first thing Schneizel was going to say, how he'd respond to any of his statements, the exact timing of the responses, and even the moment Schneizel would]] ''[[The Tape Knew You Would Say That|interrupt him]]''.

* In ''[[Fairy Tail]]'', Jellal reveals his Gambit Roulette after the Magic Council fires a magic laser for the purpose of destroying his aim to resurrect an evil mage. When the dust clears, it's found that it had been his plan to do so all along, as some special crystals have absorbed all the magic fired, giving him the power source to resurrect him. One could say that it was more of a [[Batman Gambit]] considering he planted an astral projection of himself in the council in order to guide them to that point, but there was no guarantee they would use the magic laser, hit the tower straight on, and the crystals would absorb all the magic, and that he wouldn't be found out...etc.

* A frighteningly good Roulette is used in, of ''all'' the Gundam series, the [[Super Robot|much-less-serious]]-[[Real Robot|than-usual]] ''[[G Gundam]]''. Neo-Japan's previous Gundam-Fighter and now military advisor was behind the intrigue to claim the Devil Gundam in order to use it to rule the world. Therefore he blamed Kyouji and removed Domon's father from the scene. He even used Domon to get his hands on his toy of destruction. In the end he can foil Neo-Hong Kong's prime minister to get his hands on the Devil but it is (of course) of no use to him.

* [[Spider-Man]]'s infamous [[The Clone Saga|Clone Saga]] was eventually revealed to be a massive Gambit Roulette by [[Norman Osborn]].

 

* In ''[[Aeon Natum Engel]]'' Gendo admits this is what his plans amount to. Although, considering the setting, even [[Xanatos Gambit]]s are in risk of becoming like this. Why? Well, because [[Eldritch Abomination|Nyarlathotep]] is a [[Spanner in the Works|dick]].

* ''In [[Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality]]'', Draco remembers a tragedy play his father brought him to see (an expy of [[Death Note]]), and at the end, Lucius asked him what the meaning of the play was. Draco mistook it to be as clever as the characters. His father chastised him, saying that any plan that requires more than three steps to succeed is unlikely to the point of worthless. And because only a fool goes with a plan that is barely possible, you really should never plan more than two steps.

* Anytime anyone does anything in ''[[Light and Dark - The Adventures of Dark Yagami|Light and Dark The Adventures of Dark Yagami]]''.

* ''[[My Little Avengers]]'': It's eventually revealed that ''the entire plot'' was engineered by [[Big Bad|Loki]] in order to create a scenario wherein [[The Hero|Big Mac]] is forced to willingly surrender Thor's power, allowing Loki to take over Equestria. And it temporarily works, too, only being undone due to Pinkie Pie being a bigger [[Spanner in the Works]] than even [[Magnificent Bastard|Loki]] could have anticipated.

 

== Film ==

* The ''[[Ocean's Eleven]]'' series. The plans of the main characters match this trope quite well, apparently requiring ''everything'' to interlock absolutely perfectly. However, [[Gambit Speed Chess|they have to adjust the plans several times due to unexpected variables]].

** In particular, the heist in ''Ocean's Thirteen'' relies on a Gambit Roulette within a Gambit Roulette, with a third Gambit Roulette thrown in for good measure. By the end of the film, the plan becomes so circuitous that it almost qualifies as a subversion itself.

* In ''[[Wild Things]]'', Suzie plots to kill the dirty cop who killed her ex-boyfriend and get rich in the process. The full plot is too complicated to explain, but involves relying on everyone being willing to betray everyone else, before then discovering that they've been betrayed themselves. And [[But Wait! There's More!|as if that's not enough]], in the final scene, the defense lawyer from the rape trial, chosen from the phonebook, implies that he was somehow in on it all along.

** Most of it does rely on people behaving in [[Batman Gambit|character-predictable ways]] rather than sheer insane chance, especially as the plan meant that anything that looked coincidental was usually a result of then-unrevealed plotters working the other side and delivering the right evidence exactly on cue. It's still ludicrously complicated.

* The aggregate actions of the Joker in ''[[The Dark Knight]]'': for an agent of chaos with a stated disdain for [[The Chessmaster|Chessmasters]], he manages to effortlessly pull together seemingly random and improbable events into a single overall scheme.

* ''[[Total Recall]]'': For his scheme to work, Mars Administrator Cohaagen has to eventually get Quaid back to Mars (but he blows his memory cap early so he ends up becoming a [[Loose Cannon Cop]]), he has to get in contact with the Mars Resistance so that Cohaagen can find Resistance Leader Quaato. When this actually happens, Cohaagen admits that the possibility was nearly unbelievable, and even [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshades it]], rattling off a list of all the ways in which the plan actually went wrong. This is one of the many reasons behind the [[All Just a Dream]] interpretation of the movie.

** Remember that Dalton Russell (aka. the main man and the man who is actually carrying away the cash) is not amongst the fake hostages and in fact exploits the fact that it is ridiculously unlikely that the police would look for newly-made hidden hideouts in the back, and that they wouldn't expect the criminals to not leave the bank for a week. The only way the police COULD have caught Dalton without assaulting the building head-on in the first minute would be to have [[Sherlock Holmes]] level insight.

* ''[[The Shawshank Redemption]]'' with Andy Dufresne's method of stealing the Warden's clothing and ledgers and crawling through a hole in his cell made by a rock hammer and covered by a poster in the span of 19 years, the exact night of a thunderstorm as to conceal the noises made by his pounding a rock on a pipe to escape the prison by crawling through a sewer pipe... all this time one-upping the warden. [[So Cool Its Awesome|Ridiculously legendary]]!

** The antagonist did have a remote trigger for the bomb, so he could have just ordered the bus to speed. Maybe...

* The end of ''Ninja Champion'' is especially (in)famous for this.

* ''Reindeer Games'' would be completely forgotten if it wasn't for the twist ending that's so insane that it pretty much defies all logic.

* Alexander Pearce's plan in ''[[The Tourist]]''. He tells his wife to board a particular train at a a particular time and randomly select a passenger of his height and build, whom she will then pretend is him in disguise. It turns out that the guy she picked really ''is'' him in disguise. But, wait, go back and read that again: she's to pick a guy at random. Well, what if she had picked a different guy? It's not like there's only one man of his height and build on that train. In fact, she almost ''does'' pick someone else, but it turns out he's traveling with someone. Could have gotten a bit sticky if he'd been alone, no?

* The last car chase of ''[[The Skulls]]'' sees the heroes Luke and Will being chased at high speed along a train track before it finally comes to a stop with them crashing full speed into a dirt berm at the end of the tracks and the bad guy about the shoot Luke. But a split second before he pulls the trigger, he is shot (at long range) by the cop who then tells them that it was his plan all along to have this happen, thus showing that even the good guys can have convoluted plans. Of course, at any time during the car chase, Luke and Will could have crashed and been killed. Or the cop could have missed his long range shot with a pistol, allowing the bad guy to shoot Luke. But I guess that was part of the plan as well,

 

* In ''[[The Brothers Karamazov]]'', many of the elements of Smerdyakov's plan to kill Fyodor Karamazov were ''obviously beyond his control''. The book offers a good example of a [[The Chessmaster|Chessmaster]] attempting to manipulate events and people he realistically doesn't understand fully. The kicker though? He still pulls it off with a bit of improvisation.

* In ''The Possessed'', [[Complete Monster]] Petr Stepanovic's labyrinthine plan, involving dozens of different characters, is mostly successful - he manages to manipulate people left and right, even if he is shown to completely misunderstand the motivations of some of them, like Stavrogin and Kirillov. Another interesting subversion of the trope is that the more complex parts of the plan (like persuading several persons to kill another man with a flimsy reason) go off like clockwork, and the apparently simpler details (like persuading a suicidal nut to... kill himself) almost fall apart on several occasions.

* ''[[The Count of Monte Cristo]]'' has the Count executing a plan for revenge that's unspeakably convoluted and relies on manipulating people in ridiculously subtle and complex ways—for example, he somehow manipulates Madame de Villefort into poisoning half her family by casually conversing with her about chemistry.

* The [[Evil Overlord|Shadow Lord]] in the ''Deltora'' books made it clear: "I have many plans. Plans within plans..." And indeed, by the ''beginning'' of the series, he had them set in place so that he was prepared for any conceivable contingency. Except dragons.

* ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]'':

** Also in ''Deathly Hallows'', Dumbledore's method of getting Harry to find the Hallows relies on random encounters - for example, Hermione only recognised the symbol in her book because she happened to meet Luna's dad at Fleur and Bill's wedding. The same goes for Harry finding out {{spoiler|he is a Horcrux}}; if he hadn't been there when {{spoiler|Snape died}} he would never have {{spoiler|made his [[Heroic Sacrifice]] and Voldemort would've stayed immortal}}.

* In the [[Young Bond]] book ''Double or Die'', a teacher at Eton is kidnapped and only has enough time to send a letter confirming his resignation and send his last crossword to ''The Times''. In this, he manages to get clues to Bond and his friends about what's really happened to him, where they can go to find more information and that a friend of his is coming to Eton. This teacher probably attended a school where [[Death Note|Light]] was the headmaster and [[Saw|Jigsaw]] was the art teacher.

* Successfully executed by [[The Chessmaster]] of ''[[The Assassins of Tamurin]]'', but without pushing [[Willing Suspension of Disbelief]], due to the years of effort she puts into it and the fact that she's crazy.

{{quote|Clonak stared at him as if he’d taken leave of his wits. “Well, of ''course'' we gave you to them, Shadow! Who else did we have more likely to trump them than a first-in, pure-blood yos’Phelium scout ''commander''? Concentrated random action. Would we waste such a weapon? Would you? I didn’t think so.[...]"}}

 

* In the series ''[[Lie to Me (TV series)|Lie to Me]]'', this is Cal Lightman's favorite strategy, calling it the Long Con. This to the point of even tricking his own employees into actions he knew they would do to help.

* On ''[[24]]'' many terrorist plans are of this nature. For example, one plan in the fourth season involves kidnapping the Secretary of Defense, and threatening to execute him live on the Internet; using the traffic that generates as a mask for them hacking into every nuclear power plant in America; using ''that'' as a diversion for hijacking a fighter plane to shoot down Air Force One, then stealing the nuclear "football" from the wreckage; using the data in the football to intercept a nuclear missile being transported through Iowa; and finally, firing the missile at Los Angeles. The villains have no explicable way of knowing that the football would survive the impact, that the plane would crash close enough to their location for them to reach it before emergency crews, or that a nuclear missile would be on the road in the vicinity of their secondary team.

Both: *fume*

Tyler: *dead man walking* }}

 

== Mythology ==

* In [[Norse Mythology]] Óðinn is engaging in one to delay the coming of [[Apocalypse How|Ragnarök]] and possibly beat it. [[Magnificent Bastard|This includes instigating wars between the nations and tribes of Miðgarðr to ensure there is a steady supply of warriors for the Valkyrjr to pick up for Valhöll so He has a good army for the final battle. He also spends a lot of time wandering the Nine Worlds for information about Ragnarök from any source He can find including giants.]] [[Justified Trope|Justified]] in that He gave one eye for wisdom of the future and hung Himself from the [[World Tree]] to gain the wisdom of the runes for use to the same end.

** It potentially gets even more intricate. There is a fairly common theory that Odin and Loki are the same entity.

 

== [[Professional Wrestling]] ==

* In [[TNA]], the recent Eric Bischoff / [[Hulk Hogan]] angle paints the both as cunning schemers of Machiavellian levels though many elements of their scheme ([[Jeff Hardy]] being able to make it to the World Title Tournament finals & Dixie Carter foolishly signing a contract without even ''looking'' at it) would completely unravel the scheme if it had not gone precisely in their favor, requiring the conspirators to either be insanely lucky or nigh-omniscient.

** There is also the fact that they had plenty of opportunities to get the World title on either [[Jeff Hardy]] or Abyss that were much more convenient than the Triple Threat match at ''Bound for Glory''. For example, at ''Victory Road'' 2010, there was a Fatal Four Way match involving Jeff Hardy vs. Abyss vs. Mr. Anderson vs. [[Rob Van Dam]], or at ''The Whole F'n Show'' where they had Abyss vs. [[Rob Van Dam]] with Eric Bischoff as the guest referee.

** What's particularly strange is that, unlike what you might think, they actually did nothing to help [[Jeff Hardy]] win the title. When it comes to something that your plan hinges on this way, you'd think they would actually do something to make sure it happened.

* The Higher Power plot involving the [[Ministry of Darkness]] was started MONTHS before their slated goal was even needed, depended on their target acting very much out of character, and disregarded simpler, much more assured ways to accompllish their purpose.

 

* The [[Eldritch Abomination|chaos god]] Tzeentch, also known as the Architect of Fates and the Great Schemer, is the ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]]'' and ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' god of Gambit roulettes and literally lives for pulling the strings of reality in increasingly implausible and intricate ways - in fact, because such scheming is such an intricate part of its being, Tzeentch is virtually ''incapable'' of doing things straight. Even the other gods step carefully around Tzeentch because of this, which is probably just what it planned anyhow. Tzeentch's C'tan counterpart the Deceiver has been pulling some pretty twisty stuff too and it is not very clear how far each is playing the other. To a much lesser extent, the Eldar Seers have pulled off less ambitious ones - like engineering Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka's rise to Warboss and indirectly causing the last two wars for Armageddon, with billions of human lives lost, just to avoid an Ork attack on a Craftworld many years down the line.

** [[Fan Wank|Some fans]] theorize the [[God-Emperor]] of Mankind planned out his necessity for life support, to better make the Imperium worship him, which helps humanity weaken Chaos (as faith weakens them).

* The Temporal Probability Agency is all about this. A sentient computer sends information back in time to itself from all possible time lines in order to best instruct their agents on how to save the world. Agents get odd little instructions, like 'Save this plane from terrorists. Also, spill a drink on the captain.'

 

* In his fourth tour, ''Enigma'' (2009–10), British illusionist and mentalist Derren Brown pulls one off spectacularly, with the set-up lasting the entire show:

** At the beginning, he gives a man in the audience an envelope containing a card and tells him not to open it.

** And finally, he says "[[But Wait! There's More!]]", and reveals the main reason he called the tour ''Enigma'' back in ''2007'': it's an acronym of all six cards in the order. Cue the final set of gasps and standing ovations.

 

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* ''[[G Senjou no Maou]]'' gives us one in the form of the devil, [[Magnificent Bastard|Maou]]. Every one of his plans require that everyone acts exactly how he knows them to act. A single misstep would bring down the entire scheme. This culminates in his last giant trap: {{spoiler|creating a blockade and making it a hell on earth all to get his father out of prison}}. It should also be noted that despite this, he ''still'' manages to weasel himself out of sticky situations by playing [[Gambit Speed Chess]] with the protagonists.

* In ''[[Rainbow Six]] Vegas'', Gabriel Nowak—one of your allies—turns out to be the mastermind behind an assault on the entirety of Las Vegas by an army of mercenary terrorists, in order to distract the authorities and assault a hidden military complex under a dam suspiciously like Hoover Dam, in order to steal prototype weaponry. How does he convince the good-guys he is on their side? He participates in an operation where he is captured by terrorists. In the first game, after being captured, he is rescued by other members of Rainbow. In the middle of the escape, the team gets into a firefight, then leaves him behind, later revealing that he is the bad-guy when he manages to steal a Rainbow helicopter and is either shot down or just crashes it. In ''Vegas 2'', he apparently was released before his "rescue" in order to masquerade as an NSA agent supporting ''yet another'' Rainbow team—two members of which were in the team that rescues him—before going back to the casino where he is "held captive", then goes back pretending to be an NSA Agent in order to fool his former mentor and fellow Rainbow member, Bishop and bump off an underling, one of the terrorist leaders. In addition to being a heist plan who's complexity surpases that of something cooked up by Danny Ocean, it requires absolutely ''everything'' to go exactly to plan. And all the while, he is simultaneously at huge risk for getting mistaken as an escaped hostage or an NSA Agent and shot by his own mooks, getting blown up in his own capture or dying in the helicopter crash (you can just shoot it down, but if you don't it seems like he did it intentionally). It's also worth mentioning that he also did the attack on Vegas to take two scientists from the WMD project hostage, ''knowing'' they would be rescued so they could be sent back to the compound under the dam...to be taken hostage ''again'' in the attack on the dam! The odds that he would not get killed trying to do this—never mind getting away with it—are astronomical. But he ''does''...nearly. But hey, it's [[Viva Las Vegas|Vegas, baby]]!...*sigh* [[I Need a Freaking Drink]] after typing that...

 

== [[Web Art]] ==

* This motivational poster is part of Aizen's plan - http://browse.deviantart.com/?q=motivational&order=9&offset=24#/d2lvs4q

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

* At the end of the "Professor Madblood and the Doppelganger Gambit" arc in ''[[Narbonic]]'', Helen claims the whole chaotic sequence of events was her plan. As the series goes on, it's hinted that she plans a great deal more than typically believed - Artie at one point suspects everything about him was engineered so that he could save Helen's life at one crucial, impossible-to-predict moment. Of course, Helen ''is'' a megalomaniac (albeit an extremely cute one), so some or all of this could be from her own self-aggrandizing. Indeed, in another comic, she explicitly claims a fondness for the [[Indy Ploy]] approach: "It's times like these I almost question my usual strategy of doing whatever dumb thing pops into my head."

* Near the end of ''[[Walkyverse|It's Walky]]'', a [[We Can Rule Together]] speech by Penny and (presumably correct) extrapolation by Alan reveal that Dargon founded SEMME in the ''seventies'' specifically to gather abductees and Martian technology, the former to be given just this [[We Can Rule Together]] speech, the latter in anticipation of SEMME's eventual disbandment and the resultant scattering of Martian technology to military centers around the world. The latter event, by the way, was ''thirty years later'' and contingent on an HA caper they couldn't possibly have predicted, itself following his ''death and resurrection''. If either Dargon or Penny had lived long enough, we might have seen what, exactly, they planned to do with the world's military infrastructure destroyed.

** The trope was actually ''parodied'' near the beginning of the strip:

* Mentioned extensively in [http://www.cracked.com/article_16848_6-most-pointlessly-elaborate-movie-murder-plots.html Cracked.com's 6 Most Pointlessly Elaborate Movie Murder Plots].

* The purple and pink unicorns of the [http://youtube.com/watch?v=CsGYh8AacgY&feature=user Charlie the Unicorn] fame went through some pretty crazy convoluted schemes just to steal from Charlie. In [http://youtube.com/watch?v=QFCSXr6qnv4 Charlie the Unicorn 2], the fact that they get sucked into a [[Swirly Energy Thingy|strange vortex]] and find an amulet to return to the alleged â��Bo-nana Kingâ�, have a somewhat [[gratuitous Spanish]] conversation to a giant block Z, ride a giant sneaker, arrive at the Temple of the Bananas, then perform in a sing-a-long accompanied with a chorus just to discover that [[Twist Ending|Charlie was the Banana King all along]] is a completely outrageous chain of events seeing how this was just used to distract Charlie long enough to rob him of his valuables. Then again, the pink and purple unicorns could just be [[Obfuscating Stupidity]]â�¦or are they?.

* In the early days of the [[League of Intergalactic Cosmic Champions]] The Man In Black would claim that things were going exactly as planned, even if there was no way he could have planned it.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaI08XMRC7A This short] from Liv Films.

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'': When [[Big Good|Princess Celestia]] appears at the end of the two-part pilot for the first season, she announces she'd basically planned out the whole plot in advance, in that she knew that Twilight Sparkle would end up using the Elements of Harmony to defeat the villain. How she knew she'd run into just the right group of new friends and they'd each get a chance to prove themselves along the way as fit to wield the Elements is anyone's guess. Celestia is certainly smart, and the true extent of her abilities is unknown, but predicting all that would have taken near omniscience. (So even she ''has'' that, it's still the trope by default.)

 

* According to some historians, [[Adolf Hitler]]. He is supposed to have had an exact 'blueprint for aggression' even before coming to power. More recent interpretations tend to portray Hitler as an often brilliant opportunist instead, who seized opportunities others provided and got by with [[Indy Ploy]]s. [[World War II|It didn't end so well.]]

** Another common theory is that he was trying to do this trope and did so badly, which is why leaders on both sides saw him as a threat to his own plans.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Narrative Devices]]

[[Category:Older Than Radio]]

[[Category:The Plan]]