Go Seduce My Arch-Nemesis

So you've got this character, usually female, always sexy. She might be his Dark Mistress, she might be the hero's girlfriend, a Femme Fatale, but who she is in relation to the story isn't really that important. The point is, she's hot. And hot chicks can do one thing really well. Seduce people and snare them into a Honey Trap.

When a hero resorts to this kind of tactic, their situation is getting pretty desperate. After all, My Girl Is Not a Slut. Not to mention the fact that having a villain be able to gloat about how they "did your girl" is something with major potential to be obnoxious. Oftentimes the hero doesn't resort to it at all—the Love Interest does, realizing that it would be very helpful in this particular situation but that there's no way he would feel comfortable asking her to do it.

Villains, curiously enough, don't seem be that bothered this kind of exploitation at all. Apparently as long as the seduction is for the sake of the greater evil, they can overlook the minor detail that this is technically adultery. It makes sense when you remember that they're evil. Of course, evil tactics often have a tendency to backfire and cause his Dark Mistress to feel sympathy (or love!) for the hero when he's supposed to be her enemy. This rarely happens the other way around.

No real life examples, please; This is All The Tropes, not Tropes After Dark.

Examples of Go Seduce My Arch-Nemesis include:

Anime and Manga

• In the manga version of Heat Guy J, Trinity designs a buxom, scantily-clad robot girl to go seduce and strangle Clair's biggest (and ugliest) rival. (This does not happen in the anime version; Trinity does not exist, and Clair sent a tanker truck full of napalm to that rival instead of a sexy girl, human or otherwise.)

Film

• Batman (1989). Vicki Vale does this to the Joker while he's forcing her to dance with him. She saw Batman nearby and wanted to distract the Joker and give Batman a chance to attack him. It works (she's played by Kim Basinger, it should).
• The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything (1981). Bonnie Lee Beaumont acts seductively toward Wesley Reins to trick him into a situation where he can be interrogated.
• Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Happens twice: Ivana Humpalot is sent to seduce Austin, but does a Heel Face Turn. Later Felicity Shagwell has sex with Fat Bastard in the line of duty.

Austin: How could you do it?
Felicity: I was just doing my job.
Austin: No, I mean, literally; how could you do it? The man's so fat, the sheer mechanics of it are mind-boggling.

• Blazing Saddles. Hedley Lamarr sends Lili von Shtupp to seduce and abandon the Sheriff of Rock Ridge. She does a Heel Face Turn too.
• Undercover Brother. White She Devil is sent by Mr. Feather to seduce the title hero. Yet another Heel Face Turn.
• Dr. Elsa Schneider in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. She seduces both Drs. Jones at the Nazis' orders.
• Eve in North by Northwest was supposed to seduce Thornhill for the explicit purpose of leading him to his death in a cornfield. It doesn't work.
• In another Alfred Hitchcock example, Devlin in Notorious orders Alicia Huberman to sleep with the Nazi expatriate Alexander Sebastian. Alicia complies, and he berates her for it. Interestingly, when Devlin's superiors demonstrate the same Hypocrisy toward Alicia that he has, Devlin defends her.
• The Rocketeer: initially Jenny is seduced by Neville, but later (when she realizes he's up to something) pretends to still be more interested in him than she really is.
• A textbook procedure against James Bond. You'd think they'd learn.
• In Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, when the hero is captured, the lady apparently defects to the Big Bad, by saying she could be many things to him, including a word she uses in German. The hero asks him what that was, and the Big Bad says she said she could even be his "Cleaning Woman". This is the good guy's Berserk Button that when he hears it that allows him to defeat the Big Bad.
• In The Prestige Angier sends Olivia over to seduce Borden and steal his secrets; unfortunately for him she is so angered by this that she really does side with Borden and the two double cross Angier.
• The latest Sherlock Holmes movie (with Robert Downey, Jr.) has Irene Adler, a seductive Femme Fatale and old rival to Holmes, who is paid by Professor Moriarty to try to snag, among other things, Holmes' heart. It's arguable whether she succeeds, or indeed whether she's succeeded previously; it's also strongly hinted by Moriarty himself that this is more of a case of Go Seduce My Arch-Nemesis Who You're Kind Of In Love With Already, Or I'll Kill Him If You Don't.
• In High Plains Drifter, a character resentful of the protagonist sends his wife to distract him with a romantic dinner and sex, and the plan was that afterward he and his gang would kill the protagonist while he had his guard down.

Literature

• This occurs a few times in Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series. When you're the Incarnation of Evil and have hordes of Horny Devils at your command, what do you have to lose by trying this? (Quite a lot, as it turns out.)
• The title character of the sixteenth century Japanese story Akimichi sends his wife to seduce the man who killed his father.

Live Action Television

• In Twin Peaks, Josie Packard is sent from Thomas Eckhardt to be the wife of his arch rival, Andrew Packard. Somewhat similarly, she was also playing both sides against each other when Ben Horne and Catherine Martell were rivals.
• In Thirty Rock, Jack sends Kenneth to seduce his gay archnemesis, Devin, and keep him from a meeting. It almost works.
• In Gossip Girl, Blair gets Chuck to seduce Vanessa (though not actually sleep with her) in order to humiliate her. Later, Chuck swaps Blair to his Evil Uncle to get his hotel back - she thinks it's her decision. However, he subtly manipulated her into it, so she didn't find out until later that he'd organised the whole deal.
• In iCarly, Freddie begs to help Sam seduce Shane, so that he has a better shot with Carly, their best friend, who is also trying to seduce Shane.
• A gender-reversed version occurs in comedy series Campus where Vice-Chancellor de Wolfe sends womanising lecturer Matt Beer to seduce his nemesis Georgina Bryan. Subverted a little because there's no trap at the end - the VC is just hoping she'll mellow a bit after the event and not cut his university to pieces.
• Mad Men:
  • Pete more or less asks his wife to do, um, whatever she would need to do with an old ex-boyfriend to get him to publish Pete's short story in a reputable magazine (Pete being jealous of a coworker who has a story in the Atlantic). She goes to see the guy, but turns him down when he asks her out (relegating Pete's story to Boy's Life, alas) and calls Pete out on it when she gets home.
  • In a later episode, Don is the only one in the office who knows Sal is gay and is grudgingly keeping it a secret. A major client, Depraved Bisexual Lee Garner, Jr., comes on to Sal and has to be rebuffed. He then refuses to work with Sal, losing him his job, and when Sal tells Don what happened, Don is unsympathetic. Sal asks if Don means he should have just done whatever Garner wanted, and Don doesn't say no. Sal stays fired.
• Step One: Watch Star Trek TOS, and drink whenever Captain Kirk finds himself in a situation where Sexy Sideways Smile #6 is his only weapon. Step Two: rush to the hospital with alcohol poisoning.

Western Animation

• When Aladdin tries to recover the lamp from Jafar, Jasmine sees him and promptly starts acting seductively toward Jafar, who she had only rebuffed a moment ago, as a diversion. She even gives him a "Shut Up" Kiss at a critical moment when the clanging of the lamp alerts Jafar to Aladdin's presence, but this only succeeds in causing Aladdin to stare at her in stupid shock.
  • This is actually based on the original story (one of the few things that are, actually), but in the original story, Aladdin explicitly tells the princess to pretend to be in love with the sorcerer, rather than just letting her know he's in the palace and acting as shocked as everyone else when she seduces his arch nemesis.
• In The Venture Bros, the Monarch sends Doctor Girlfriend to do this against Doctor Venture as part of an elaborate scheme to turn him into some sort of caterpillar. This example explores the "don't you care about her having sex with another man?" angle rather bizarrely- The Monarch watches the seduction with a bug and starts masturbating to it until one of his henchmen walk into the room.
  • Which didn't stop him from having a Villain BSOD once Dr. Girlfriend began to sympathize with Rusty.
    • Though it's mentioned in another episode that The Monarch watching Dr. Mrs. The Monarch have sex with other men is a relatively common occurence. Apparently they're into cuckolding.
• In Heavy Metal 2, Julie herself actually goes and seduces Tyler to get close enough for the kill. She succeeds in delivering what should have been a mortal blow. Unfortunately, she doesn't know that Tyler is Type III immortal.
• In Disney's |Hercules, Hades uses Meg to find out Hercules' weakness.

Hades: Perhaps I haven't been throwing the right curves at him.

• In Superman: The Animated Series, Lana Lang decides to take the initiative and attempts this on Lex Luthor despite Superman's protests.
• In El Arca, Panty is sent by Dagnino to seduce Xiro.

Webcomics

• In Order of the Stick, Nale switches places with Elan. He takes it on himself to seduce Haley, in order to "coax her into wearing a dress with clear access to her sternum".
• Played for laughs in Cheer when Tamara Cass (Alpha Bitch) sends her boyfriend to seduce Genius Ditz Joanna Star.