Snipe Hunt

"The following items do not exist: Keys to the Drop Zone, a box of grid squares, blinker fluid, winter air for tires, canopy lights, or Chem-Light ® batteries." ^note Note that in a bit of Technology Marches On, the last two do exist now.

— #152 on Skippy's List

A common hazing ritual in real life, a Snipe Hunt consists of sending the Butt-Monkey, Naïve Newcomer, or a Bumbling Sidekick out on an impossible or imaginary task to get them out of the way or humiliate them. Oftentimes used in comedy as a B-Plot to the main action, and a common ending involves the getter finding what they were sent out to get (even if it was, say, a unicorn) or finding the wrong thing and having hilarity ensue. Bonus points if the finder locates the imaginary item or accomplishes the Impossible Task right away.

Named after a common practical joke that involves sending a newcomer out to catch a snipe, a real-life marsh-dwelling bird that riflemen find extremely difficult to get a piece of (hence the term "sniper", implying that the marksman has enough skill to consistently bring down that same tricky bird), in a bag. The victim is left there "holding the bag" as part of the humiliation. Also commonly referred to as a fool's errand, and may overlap with You, Get Me Coffee. (Interestingly enough, the term "snipe hunt" is so much more well known than the actual bird that many people are surprised to find out that there really is a bird called a snipe.)

The fictional version of the snipe is often described as a rather horrific creature. Usually something akin to a werewolf, or mutant bird. Fictional snipes are usually described as being all black with glowing red eyes.

On occasion, someone who sends a new-hire on a Snipe Hunt will have dramatically underestimated his target's intelligence; one semi-famous example is that of a new Navy recruit being sent to the engine room to get a 'bucket of steam', only to return ten minutes later with a pail full of dry ice! If it was supposed to be a genuinely Impossible Task, such an act of We Do the Impossible can set a character up as either a genius, a badass, or at least a master of lateral thinking.

In a real-life work situation, Snipe Hunts are met with a variety of responses depending on the nature of the workplace — while a less 'formal' atmosphere, like your local FutureShop, might just shake their heads and bear the tradition, a lawyer's office is much more structured, and a Snipe Hunt means that you're holding up someone's (possibly time-critical) files in order to play a useless prank.

Oftentimes, the character returns only to be sent out again, to fulfill a more specific version of the demand, e.g.: "I wanted a red flower" Or, "Get me DIET Soda". And sometimes, the person actually wasn't meant to go on a snipe hunt but takes a joke literally. Akin to: "Go jump off a cliff." "Okay!"

The deadly version is The Uriah Gambit when someone is sent on a dangerous mission by a "friendly" party who secretly wants them dead. See also Privacy by Distraction, "Shaggy Dog" Story and Wild Goose Chase. See also Windmill Crusader, where the participant fails to complete the search. Can result in Seeking the Intangible.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Eureka Seven: The crew of the Gekko State did this to Renton in the episode "Absolute Defeat". Renton was sent to deliver a package of "highly-explosive" ramen noodles in a stupid costume and told that his contact would be a man bearing a tattoo of a "legendary and mythical beast". Moondoggie (the previous New Meat of the Gekko State) gets sent out to videotape Renton making a fool of himself, but suspects that he's actually on a meta-snipe hunt when Renton takes the job unnaturally seriously. When Moondoggie finally snaps and starts beating Renton up, the boy was saved by a man with a tattoo of Holland on his back; Renton immediately decides that he's found his contact. Hilarity Ensues — on both sides of the screen. The guys back on the Gekko watching it all were laughing their asses off, almost to the point of literally rolling on the floor.
• GTO: The Early Years: Eikichi ditches his annoying "elite guard" of first-year delinquents by ordering them to make it so he won't have to take extra classes to graduate. They decide the best course of action is to burn all the report cards, which nearly burns down the school.
• Hajime no Ippo: When Sendo arrives to spar with Miyata, Ippo isn't allowed to go watch because the gym had officially cut all ties to the Miyata family. In order to give Ippo an excuse to go watch the fight anyway, his gymmates send him to buy them some nonexistent products, including Pokarimin C drink, Tsuchinoko drink, Arowana Cola, Doctor Pappy, and next month's issue of a magazine. Surprisingly, he does find a Tsuchinoko drink.
• In Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple, Shiba sends Takeda on several of these before he'll take him on as a student. Takeda somehow manages to pull it off. Shiba takes this as a sign that fate wants him to train Takeda, and takes him on as a disciple.
• Naruto Shippuden: In the Six Tails filler arc, Utakata promises to accept Hotaru as a student if she fulfills tasks that he thinks are impossible for her (for example, mastering a water jutsu that is impossible to do without water-nature chakra), since he doesn't believe that he can truly give her what she wants. Contrary to what he expects, she manages to accomplish each task.
• Wagnaria!!: In episode 8 of season 2, Souma sends Aoi on an errand to find "shanbalileh" to hide her while her brother is looking for her.

Comedy

• Milton Jones:
  "On my first day on the building site, I was ready to be sent off on some stupid errand or other—for a bucket of "striped paint" or something—and sure enough, someone told me to go and get an "air ambulance." (tuts and rolls eyes) I showed him, though. Wandered around for a bit and then came back and said I couldn't find one anywhere. You should've seen his face!...It was blue.''

Comic Books

• An Archie Comics story has Archie sending a Central City youth on a Snipe Hunt for a film supposedly showing the Riverside star player, Moose Mason, meeting with an underworld figure. The idea being to discredit Moose and have him thrown off the football (USA Gridiron) team so Central City has a better chance of winning against Riverside. When the youth finally shows the film to the Riverside coach (having not viewed it himself previously), it shows Moose delivering a lunch box to his father... who is a sewer engineer.
• Batman: A Golden Age issue has Robin going undercover as a gofer with a construction crew stringing power cables. He is subjected to the traditional hazing by being to sent to fetch a 'brass magnet' and 'light bulb oil'.
• DC Comics House of Secrets: A one-page strip shows Abel, whose brother Cain has convinced him to catch a snipe in a graveyard at night. Cain peers cackling around a gravestone.
• Justice League: Year One has Fish out of Water Aquaman asked to find a "bulb wrench" to help with work on the new headquarters after he accidentally crushes a light bulb because he is unused to the pressure of the atmosphere as opposed to the ocean. He does not see the funny side once he realizes what happened since he sees it as an example of being excluded and mocked for being different.
• Mortadelo y Filemón: The search for the titular traitor in the story "Hay un traidor en la T.I.A." ("There's a traitor in the T.I.A.") eventually turns into this. The enemies knew all the secret plans because the Super transmitted them to Fulgencio, the service coordinator who is located in the building in front of the T.I.A. headquarters, by yelling them at him from the window, so the enemies only had to place a spy waiting on the sidewalk below and record everything.
• In Superman/Supergirl: Maelstrom, Darkseid orders the titular villain to go and behead Superman, so he has an excuse to banish her from Apokolips forever when she inevitably fails.

Comic Strips

• In one Dennis the Menace (US) comic, Dennis's dad tells him how to catch a snipe as a joke. Somehow his instruction actually work, except the snipe Dennis brings back turns out to be a skunk, which sprays the unlucky dad.
• Foxtrot:
  • In an early strip, Peter asks Jason if he wants to go on a snipe hunt. Jason refuses and says only an idiot wouldn't know what a snipe hunt is. Cut to them asking their dad if he wants to go on a snipe hunt.
  • Another strip had Peter and Paige again asking Jason if he wants to go on a snipe hunt.
    Peter and Paige: Hey, Jason, wanna go on a snipe hunt?
    Jason: Why? So you two can lead me out into the woods and ditch me? Where under a full moon every tree will look like a gnarly zombie reaching out to grab me and every shadow will look like Bigfoot moving in for the kill?
    Peter and Paige: Um, maybe.
    Jason: (excited) Cool. Can we wait 'til it gets a little darker out?
• In Retail, one of the pranks Cooper plays on new employees is asking for them to go and search around for a "wall stretcher".
  • Once, he's stunned to find one of the newbies doesn't move an inch. She just says she 'wasn't born yesterday'. He notes that this employee has potential to go far.
  • Cooper himself ends up on the receiving end of this during his stint in the shoe department: when Alan asks Cooper to get the Brannock device, Cooper calls him out on sending him on a snipe hunt, only to find out it's a real thing (specifically, it's what stores use to measure a person's feet). Cooper is so embarrassed that he doesn't question it when Alan then tells him to go get the 'shoelace repair kit'.
• In Thimble Theatre, during the storyline Popeye makes his debut, Castor Oyl and Ham Gravy are about to leave on another adventure, and in order to ditch Olive, who insists on coming along to keep an eye on her boyfriend (Ham), they tell her to fetch a 'dimes worth of longitude'. Olive naturally gets laughed at. When Popeye tells her what longitude is, she gives Castor a good thrashing.

Fairy Tales

• "The Devil With the Three Golden Hairs": When the king asks where he found enough gold coins to fill several saddlebags, the main character tricks him into believing the shores beyond the river bordering the Devil's kingdom are covered with gold instead of sand. The king leaves to satisfy his greed, and never returns.
• "The Elf Maiden": When they are about to leave an island, the main character's rival asks him to go back to the hut and pick a knife which he dropped carelessly. When the main character gets to the hut, he looks back and sees his so-called "friend's" boat has sailed.
• In "The Three Little Men in the Wood", the stepmother orders the main character to go out in the woods -in the dead of winter- and to not return without a basket of strawberries. Although her stepdaughter protests that there are no strawberries to be found in winter, the woman -who hopes the poor girl will freeze to death- ignores her cries and shoves her out of the door.

Fan Works

• In Discworld fiction The Black Sheep, Balthazar Smith-Rhodes makes a living out of getting other people to finance his Snipe Hunts. Trading as "Howondaland Smith, Balgrog Hunter", he makes a good living persuading other people that Balgrogs exist and getting them to pay his necessary hunting expenses.
• In Cadance of Cloudsdale, Sergeant Thunderous sends Shining Armor to deliver a parcel to Princess Cadance "with Harmony level clearance". However, nobody is permitted to disturb her during dinnertime, and the Harmony clearance level is apparently so new that the Royal Guardsman don't even know about it. Naturally, it turns out that Harmony level clearance never existed in the first place.
• This was utilized against a pathetic yet persistently annoying suitor in the Ranma ½ story, Girl Days, when the only way he would be allowed to court Ranma was to find a cask of the Fabled Nannichuan, the horde of the demon Happosai, and a Phoenix's tooth. The first would have cured Ranma of his Gender Bender curse, thus resolving the issue, the second was just a bunch of stolen undergarments, and of course, Phoenixes, being birds, don't have teeth. Cologne even lampshades it, by saying if that he could pull off the last, she'd give him his choice of women in her village.
• In Hearts of Ice, Cologne does this to herself. After being blackmailed by Nabiki into getting her sister out of the Kami Plane -where Cologne's magic had exiled Akane to- the old matriarch states she is going back to China to get an Amazon relic known as the Eye of Kami which will allow to overcome the blood spell. However, there is no such a relic. It was a ruse to buy time while the Kami Plane erased all memory of Akane Tendo.
• The Hunting of the Snipe features Wallace's friends sending Daisuke off on one, only for him to return claiming that he found one. He caught onto the joke. It's Chibimon inside his bag.
• In a later chapter of Invader Zim: The Series, Sue sends Zoburg out to hunt snipe so that she can get some time alone with Spork.
• The Masked Toon Singer: The Robot reveals that they were originally told that they were going to be going undercover on the show in hopes of catching a villain. However, they quickly realized they'd been lied to; the whole thing was a pretense to send them away for a while. Thankfully, they decided to just have fun with it.
• Queens of Mewni: Venus, wanting to get rid of her Abhorrent Admirer Eric Flowers, tells him she will accept his love confession if he can bring her a Rainbow Flower, a rare flower only found in the most isolated dimension of the universe. She's stunned when, a little over 20 years later, he arrives at court and presents said flower to her. She's even more stunned when she used her wand-a Magic Mirror that shows a person's true intentions-and found he did it out of genuine love for her, and not because she was the queen or because she Really Gets Around. She would end up marrying him and remained loyal to him for their entire marriage.
• Ranma Restart: Bid for Freedom: After returning to his six-year-old body, Ranma leaves a letter for his father that's supposedly from Hideki Yamamura, claiming that he found Ranma and has taken him as per their marriage agreement. Meanwhile, he sent a letter to Hideki that was addressed from Seto Tachibana, claiming that he freed Ranma from Genma, detailing some of his father's misdeeds. Seto got a similar letter addressed from Naoto Tozawa... meanwhile, Ranma went in a different order from what the people following the letters would follow in order to annul all of the marriages his father had conned the other Martial Arts and Crafts masters of Japan into.
• Shakedown Shenanigans borrows a couple of US military classics. Somebody got Crewman Apprentice Miq’doh Drohhl to do an "echo check"^note The schmuck is told that if he yells at the engine just right, it'll resonate. on the impulse engine when Bynam was test-firing it, and Eleya refers to a Noodle Incident from when she was in the Militia where a corporal tried to get her to "blow the DCA".^note The schmuck is told that the DCA is a kind of air horn that you're supposed to blow before the ship leaves port. The DCA, or Damage Control Assistant, is a junior officer.
  "They had some trouble finding his front teeth after the next sparring session."
• Small Medium at Large: Raz's trip to Amity Park was meant to be one; the rest of the Psychonauts just wanted to distract him long enough for them to set up a surprise party. Unfortunately, none of them realized that the ghost sightings in Amity Park were the real deal...
• In So You Think You Had a Bad Hair Day, A.A. Pessimal tops this with Euryate, the one gorgon officer in the Watch, convincing a gullible Fred Colon that the un-named meat on the revolving spit in the Ephebian kebab shop is the flesh of the one-legged monopedos rabbit. So called as it only has one leg and hunting it calls for skill and fast reflexes as nobody can predict the way it will bounce on its one massively muscled leg. Stavros the kebab-shop-owner joins in with the joke, and Fred is utterly convinced.
• In The Stalking Zuko Series, Toph, fed up with Haru pestering her to teach him metalbending, sends him to find metal around the temple, confident that he'll be hard-pressed to find it and will be occupied for a long time. Haru comes back with the spoons from the kitchen.
• Taylor Hebert, Medhall Intern: The senior janitorial staff mess with Greg by sending him for things like left-hand grease, elbow grease, striped spray paint, and a short weight. On Taylor's advice, when they try to do it the next day, Greg asks if he should get a DVD rewinder too, something that earns a laugh and stops the hazing.
• Things I Am Not Allowed to Do at the PPC:
  • Rule 22 forbids hazing new recruits via giving them good fanfiction and instructing them to find the Mary Sue.
  • Rule 1869 is about not asking new agents to retrieve electricity powder from the Building Maintenance department. Its addendum suggests electricity powder is something that actually exists, but people still aren't allowed to get it from Building Maintenance.
• Transcendence (Avatar): Luz was never meant to actually find the Avatar; those who sent her off were hoping that her travels would force her to mature and start taking things more seriously.
• White Sheep (RWBY): Hazel Rainart takes up a drunken bet to find a Grimm Unicorn for his nieces, thus explaining why he isn't present for much of the story. This becomes a Brick Joke when, in the final chapter, he somehow managed to find one.

Films — Animation

• The premise of A Bug's Life. Princess Atta sends Flik out to find some bugs to fight Hopper, not expecting him to actually find anybody willing to defend an ant colony. Subverted that Flik actually finds what he's looking for...after a fashion.
• The first Shrek movie contains an example where Donkey is sent off to find a blue flower with red thorns to keep him from distracting Fiona and Shrek while they dealt with the arrow in Shrek's behind. Not only does he find the flower, he wanders through a whole copse of them, complaining that his task would be infinitely easier if he wasn't colorblind, and he only brings back the right flower because he grabs one - any one - in a panic when he hears Shrek yell. The other characters don't even react, making it a relatively subtle sight gag.
• In Disney's Tarzan Terk sends Tarzan off to find a hair...of an elephant to get rid of him for some time. He succeeds— although in the process, he causes a stampede, and the panicking elephants almost crush a baby gorilla.
• Up features a literal example. Carl sends Russell away on one to get him to stop annoying him. Eventually, he actually finds one, although it's a bit bigger than he expected. Alpha sent Dug away on a literal Snipe Hunt as well, due to the fact that Dug's foolishness was viewed a burden on the pack. True to this trope, he finds the bird. The bird becomes a principal character of the film! What makes it even funnier is that, Carl truly believed that it was impossible because he didn't know that there is such a bird as a snipe, and also that the villain has been searching for this same bird for the past century.

Films — Live-Action

• Provides one of the few lighthearted moments in the war film Flags of Our Fathers. A higher-ranking soldier asks the others in his group if they have their Masturbation Papers in order, and when one soldier (presumably the one who isn't in on the joke) says he doesn't, he's told to run and ask for them, because if he doesn't get them he can't ship out.
• A variation in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), where the quest is not impossible, but still bogus: Rocket Raccoon tells Starlord that his plan to escape prison involves some inmate's prosthetic leg. When Starlord returns with said leg (having spent a significant amount of money on it), Rocket tells him he was just kidding.
• In The Internship, because the protagonists were annoying them, the younger Google candidates send them to find Professor Charles Xavier, at Stanford. Unfortunately, since the candidates based their description of him off the actual fictional character, when they find a professor who looks a little like Charles Xavier, he assumes they're making fun of him, and promptly hits them in the nards.
• The Last Airbender: Zuko's search for the Avatar is shown to be this, even more so in Zuko's Story than in canon. When Zuko was banished from the palace, he was left to live on the street, Ozai not even bothering to give him anything to help him, as opposed to canon, where he at least gave him a small ship and crew. Here, Zuko has to resort to trying to recruit a crew in bars, which fails, with one bar patron outright telling Zuko his quest to get the Avatar was just a way for his father to get rid of him. Zuko had to ask Azula to ask Ozai to give him a ship, but even then Ozai only gives Zuko the ship to get rid of Iroh. Upon arriving at the docks of a nondescript town celebrating the Fire Days festival, Commander Kanku refuses to produce any maps or intel on the surrounding region for the banished prince in fear of losing the Fire Lord's good favor. Basically, everyone can see that Zuko's quest for the Avatar for what it is except Zuko, because of his misplaced love and loyalty to his father and hope that capturing the Avatar can end his banishment.
• In the Spanish movie Mortadelo & Filemon: The Big Adventure, the main characters are told by their superior to go and find the Holy Grail (which they confuse with the Davis Cup) as a way to have them away from the real missions. At the end of the movie, Mortadelo is about to die, and Filemón gives him a sip of water from a trophy cup. It instantly heals Mortadelo, Filemón is amazed and declares he has found the Davis Cup.
• In Ocean's Eleven, Rusty sends a detective out to "Go find Griggs", as a distraction while he's recruiting Basher in the guise of an FBI agent. This is also an example of the Bavarian Fire Drill, as Rusty brazenly walks into the police crime scene and walks off with their bombing suspect.
• In The Three Stooges short "Tassels in the Air", the boys are painting a table. The owner offers his help, so Moe, to avoid dealing with a third idiot, sends him off to mix a batch of "spotted paint." He reappears a few times throughout the short, trying to mix the paint — at one point, he tries to create the spots by pouring the paint through a strainer.

Literature

• Invoked in America (The Book), in which a new hire at the EPA is told to save the North American Gutter Snipe.
• Referenced in the Aubrey-Maturin series of books, specifically The Far Side of the World: after rescuing the crew of a whaler and de facto recruiting them (mainly because there's nowhere else to put them), the crew of the Surprise start having a bit of good-natured fun with the whalers, like having them ask the gunner for "a length of firing line". Works nicely because the civilian whalers and the naval crewmembers operate by two sets of discipline and two sets of jargon.
• Matthew McGough's Batboy: Coming of Age with the New York Yankees reveals that a common hazing ritual for new batboys was to send them to get a bucket of steam, or the key to the batter's box, or a left-handed bat stretcher (a double whammy as there is no such thing as a bat stretcher, and if there was, it would likely be ambidextrous).
• In Catherine, Called Birdy, Catherine celebrates April Fools by asking three of the household servants to bring her pigeon's milk, striped paint, and hens' teeth. To her disappointment, the first two ignore her and the third reminds her that she tries the same trick every year and they haven't fallen for it yet. ^note Though, in fact, pigeon's milk does exist. It is a high-fat, high-protein secretion from the crop lining on which newly-hatched chicks are fed. It looks somewhat like pale yellow cottage cheese.
• A Certain Magical Index:
  • Accelerator sends Index to fetch replacement batteries for the collar that lets him use his powers. Accelerator then muses that there are no replacement batteries and he did that to keep her out of harm's way while he goes to rescue Last Order.
  • Motoharu somehow knocks Touma out and smuggles him into the girl's locker room. When Touma wakes up, Motoharu calls and tells him an evil wizard has sneaked into the women's dorms and will kill everyone if Touma doesn't stop him in time. Touma runs himself ragged trying to find the wizard and evade the enraged girls before he eventually realizes he's being tricked, then catches up to Motoharu in time to stop him from torturing and killing a guy.
• In the Mark Twain short story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," the narrator suspects by the end that the whole reason he was there in the first place—to talk to Simon Wheeler and learn the whereabouts of Leonidas Smiley—was a Snipe Hunt made up by his friend so he would be stuck hearing Simon's Rambling Old Man Monologues.
• Discworld:
  • A variation appears in a number of Watch novels. Nobby and Colon are sent on these by Vimes to prevent them from interfering with actual police work but often stumble upon important clues which are vital to solving a case. Also played with in that Colon occasionally sends himself on such errands, such as making sure a bridge or the opera house isn't stolen, so he doesn't have to do any real work. No major landmark has yet been stolen — except the University, but that was a student prank. This is no mean feat, seeing as how many of the city's major landmarks are less than a foot tall, courtesy of "Bloody Stupid" Johnson's bloody stupidity.
  • In Maskerade, Mrs. Plinge mentions how other young men pick on her son Walter, including sending him out on Snipe Hunts to the market for non-existent things, e.g. transparent paint or a packet of holes.
• The Dresden Files:
  • Unsurprisingly, since Harry Dresden is something of a Phillip Marlowe expy in the earlier books, the same trick gets pulled on him several times with villains setting up an intentional Red Herring or two to get him out of the way while they work. The first occurrence is Victor Sells pointing Harry at his daughter's case, but it happens two or three times in any given novel, being a staple of the genre.
• In a William Tenn's short story "Errand Boy", warehouse workers sent an overeager boy hanging around to fetch polka-dotted paint. He brought some — wrong colour, but polka-dotted. The boy turned out to be a naive 10-year-old time traveler with romantic ideas about 20th-century businessmen, not unlike some modern depictions of pirates.
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone:
  • Played with, when Harry tells Uncle Vernon that he has to catch the school train from Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. Uncle Vernon takes him to the station, points out platforms nine and ten, tells him that the one he wants is somewhere in the middle, and cheerfully leaves Harry to find it, saying "have a good term".
  • Malfoy challenges Harry to a midnight duel, telling him to come to an empty classroom. However, Malfoy does not appear, and only told Harry this to get him into trouble for being out of bed at night.
• Into the Looking Glass: In Vorpal Blade, an arrogant Marine non-com is sent looking for "ID Ten T" decontamination fluid (ID10T). However, it's legit-it's a flask of radioactive, corrosive liquid used to decontaminate radioactive spills through heterodyne interference. However, since it becomes safe enough to drink (and tastes delicious) once used, you look like an idiot for being so careful with it (but, then again, there's a similar prank detailed under the Real Life tab that involves giving a guy a glass of juice and telling him it's battery acid so everyone can see the horrified look on his face when the recipient drinks it in front of him).
• Joe Pickett In Stone Cold, Game Warden Joe Pickett is in a neighboring district and encounters two hunters who he's been told are recurrent poachers, and when he asks what they've been hunting they answer "snipes" just to be snide. Joe comments that he was once sent on a snipe hunt by some older boys who really just left him out in the woods while they got beers in order to let the guys know that he won't put up with their bullshit as the usual game warden does.
• Legacy of the Aldenata: Inverted. When Thomas Sunday is sent to look for a tube of "Nannite Undercoating" as part of a newbie initiation routine, he returns with an entire case of KY Jelly. Having joined the 555th from another unit, he was already familiar with newbie initiations, so he turned the tables on his would-be tormentor.
• The Lotus War: A variation in Stormdancer. Everyone except the Shogun thinks the hunt for the thunder tiger is one of these. Then the protagonists find one.
• The Marvellous Land of Snergs: Mother Meldrum gets rid of Gorbo by sending him to gather mandragoras on the other side of the wood; meanwhile, she calls the ogre Golithos and offers to hand over the kids -whom Gorbo was protecting- to him in exchange for his help.
• Moongobble and Me:
  • In book 1, Fazwad the Mighty assigns Moongobble the first of three Mighty Tasks, to retrieve the Golden Acorns of Alcoona... which Fazward had personally retrieved from the Dragon of Doom seven years before. Since Moongobble befriended the dragon and learned where the Acorns were though, it counts as successfully completing the Task.
  • In book 5, the Old Woman of the Forest of Night sends the group to retrieve some toad spit from the Temple of Toadliness. It's really just an effort to get them all killed, because she knows the toads there are angry at her and will kill anyone she sends to them; fortunately for Moongobble and his friends, they escape and, in the end, help break her curse anyway.
• In the fourth Noob novel, the protagonist Player Party end up with two things: a passed-out Non-Player Character that could mean a nice quest reward if bought to the right place and a bunch of other players that they don't want to see getting part of the reward for various reasons. Gaea tells the latter to go get a defibrillator from another Non-Player Character allegedly called Dr. Maison (House in French, the language in which the novel is written). It works on everyone except her own guildmates, who know she's a Manipulative Bitch.
• The protagonist of Evelyn Waugh's novel Scoop is sent to buy a variety of non-existent items to prepare for a foreign journey. He's served by an extremely resentful shop assistant who has had the bad luck to always get stuck serving naifs on similar shopping excursions, and who believes that they're just pretending in order to waste his time.
• Played with in A Song of Ice and Fire. Robert Baratheon sent his hapless squires off to Ser Aron Santagar for a (non-existent) "breastplate stretcher" when he discovered he'd gotten too fat to fit in his old armor. They hesitate, probably knowing there is no such thing, before scampering off at his insistent roaring. Robert laughs and hopes Ser Santagar will send them on to someone else. "We could keep them going all day."
• Star Trek: Federation: Apparently while Picard was running around with Vash in "Captain's Holiday", Riker sent Data on one. Geordi also pulled one on Wesley Crusher.
  Data: I was not successful, although I did hold the bag and call for the snipe exactly as Commander Riker had instructed me. Snipe appear to be exceptionally well evolved for remaining unseen. Even the ship's computer has no record of— (Riker bursts out laughing.) Captain?
  Riker: I'm sorry, Data. It's just that, well, there are no such things as snipe.
  Wesley: What?
  Data: Have you also hunted snipe, Wesley?
  Wesley: Geordi told me—
  Riker: Eyes on the board, Mr. Crusher!
  Wesley: Aye, sir.
  Data: At least that would explain why no one has ever seen one.
• In the Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan novelization, a trainee engineer calls Admiral Kirk out on his condescending behavior by offering him a 'left-handed spanner'.
• Played with in one of the Star Wolf novels by David Gerrold: an ensign who just joined the Star Wolf's crew is sent by the Chief Engineer to fetch a "Mobius wrench". He repeatedly finds the "last person who had it," only to find it's been handed on to someone else, somewhere else in the ship. He finally gets wise to the fact there isn't any such thing as a Mobius wrench and complains about it to the Chief Engineer. At that point he finds that the whole thing had an ulterior motive: to teach him how to get around the ship fast. And it worked.
• In the Warhammer 40,000 novel Innocence Proves Nothing, an elderly Inquisition librarian assumes a character has been sent on a snipe hunt when she asks for information on Demonic Possession of techpriests, something that was considered completely unprecedented when it occurred in the previous novel. It wasn't a Daemon, but another type of Warp entity.
• In the first Warrior Cats book, Graypaw hopes that Sandpaw and Dustpaw will be sent on one, commenting that he hopes their mentors will set them the task of hunting blue squirrels all day. Firepaw doesn't get the joke, confused because there are no blue squirrels.
• In the White Indian novel Renna, Renna's fiance is subjected to one...only for him to turn the tables on the pranksters instead.

Live-Action TV

• The Bill: The repercussions of Snipe Hunts are seen when, to catch a serial graffiti artist, someone really does have to keep a wall under surveillance. Assuming it to be a joke, the policeman watching the wall wanders off.
• Blue Collar TV: In one episode, an attractive model tells Jeff Foxworthy she's been invited on a snipe hunt, and that she hopes she can catch one. He's about to warn her about the ruse when she reveals they told her she needs to wear a bikini, after which he responds "y'know, those snipe are good eating, I think I'll join you".
• Boardwalk Empire: Eli Thompson tries to send his son to the neighbor on a snipe hunt while he deals with a corrupt ward boss trying to shake him down, but the neighbor apparently didn't understand. The son returns right back home saying the neighbor had never heard of the item.
• Carnivàle: In an early episode, Ben gets sent off to "clear out the baggage trailer" on his first day of work as a roustabout; naturally, there's no such thing. He finds it anyway. (It's that kind of show.)
• Cheers: One episode revolved around Frasier being sent on a Snipe Hunt, though he later gets back at the others by agreeing to go on another and abandoning them in the cold.
• Father Ted: In "Escape From Victory", Ted gives Dougal the task of guarding the corner flags from theft during a football game. Predictably, he struggles with this.
  • Played with later, when Father Cyril does try to take one of the corner flags.
• Game of Thrones: Robert Baratheon is too fat for his armor, so he sends Lancel Lannister to find the breastplate stretcher.
• Good Eats: Alton sends his sister Marsha out to buy a "left-handed sandwich press" to distract her while he cooks with his nephew, revealing later that he already has a(n ambidextrous) press and was just trying to get her out of the way. At the end of the episode she returns, and whatever she bought is apparently so large it needs all three of them to move into the house.
• iCarly: Annoying fan Mandy is sent off to get "fladoodles", which, of course, don't exist. She comes back an hour later, claiming she had to go to some store in a different state, and then she is told: "No, we wanted fat free". Guess what else is in the bag.
• The Inbetweeners: The mechanics at Will's work experience try to send him on one. He sees through it and calls them out on it, which just reinforces their opinion that he's an annoying smart-ass.
• Leverage pulled a con based on this in "The Hot Potato Job". The idea was to fake a mole in a high-security company in order to trigger a lockdown. While Sophie and Eliot focused on hunting down the fake mole and distracting company heads, Parker would steal the potato while the security is lax. Turn out, there was a mole after all - the janitor has been stealing money for years and has an account in the Cayman Islands. Once they found him out, Sophie had to convince the head of security that there was another mole who was higher up and protecting the janitor.
• Lost Tapes: The main plot of "Southern Sasquatch" begins when two men send their future brother-in-law on a snipe hunt during a hunting trip. Everything just goes From Bad to Worse when the Fouke Monster shows up.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000: In Fire Maidens of Outer Space, Joel and the robots imply that the monster wandering the woods was sent on a Snipe Hunt by his friends.
• NCIS: The Victim of the Week in "16 Years" is found by two kids brought onto a snipe hunt by their fathers. Had they not found the body, it seems this prank would've later crossed over with the old "burning bag of poop" gag.
• The Office (US): When the whole group is on an evening cruise, the captain assigns Dwight the task of piloting the ship, which Dwight eagerly accepts. Turns out Dwight is put in front of a prop steering wheel to get him out of the Captain's hair. Even Michael can tell it's fake.
• Pawn Stars: The Old Man tries to send Chumlee on one, asking for (among other things) a bucket of steam, a glass hammer, and a left-handed coffee mug. Chumlee realizes this and brings back a steaming bucket of dry ice and a full cup of coffee, telling the old man that it's written on the bottom that it's left handed. The Old Man lifts it up to check, and spills coffee all over his shirt. Corey and Rick have no sympathy.
• Rescue Me: The firemen send new probie Damian on a search for a "universal hose coupler". Damian is smart enough to know that he's probably being messed with but powerless to do anything about it.
• Rome: The first episode had Vorenus and Pullo on a mission to search for the missing Caesar's eagle that could have been anywhere at that point. In reality, Caesar himself was pretty much banking on the eagle being stolen and missing and the mission existed only because it would be strange if nothing was done about the missing eagle. Vorenus decided to bring Pullo with him, knowing that they will fail and be disgraced since Pullo is already disgraced.
• The Wire: The detectives at Homicide make the newbie call the zoo about a "Methane Probe for Mr. Lyon".
• Yes, Dear: In "Won't Ask, Won't Tell", Christine finds out that Jimmy is deliberately ignoring her when he talks to Greg over the phone. Christine then teams up with Kim, tricking their husbands into picking up a non-existent lamp. When Greg and Jimmy find out that they were tricked into a wild goose chase, they go back home and leave their wives a package... that had an actual wild goose.
• Young Sheldon:
  • In "A Brisket, Voodoo, and Cannonball Run", Connie gives George what she says is her brisket recipe, but is really a fake that requires him to go to New Orleans for coffee and spices (including angelica under the name of "Holy Ghost Root" that he buys from a voodoo priestess), and cooking the whole thing continuously for fourteen hours. One taste, and he realizes he's been had. (Oh, and the coffee was for her, not the brisket.)
  • In "Spock, Kirk, and Testicular Hernia", Sheldon gets Missy to leave so he could watch TV by telling her that there is buried treasure in Connie's backyard.
  • In "A Lock-In, a Weather Girl and a Disgusting Habit", to get rid of Sheldon, Missy has him play Sardines, a hide-and-seek game where only one hides and the others look for him. Except that Missy has no intention of finding Sheldon. Even as an adult, Sheldon hasn't caught on and just thinks he's really good at Sardines.

Music

• The folk song "Scarborough Fair" in which the narrator replies to a proposal of marriage by agreeing only if a series of impossible tasks are performed, such as obtaining an acre of land that exactly skirts the tideline, and ploughing it with a ram's horn. In effect, a polite way of saying "No chance!"
• Kevin Bloody Wilson's song "The Apprentice" has an apprentice at a construction site being sent to find (among other things) a bucket of welding sparks, a can of striped paint, and a sheet of broken glass.

Radio

• In Cabin Pressure, Arthur the steward is sent up onto the roof of the (stationary) plane to "adjust the aerial" so that the First Officer can listen to the Six Nations rugby final on the radio. In reality, he's getting him out of the way so he can steal a passenger's expensive whisky, while Arthur spends a rather long time getting increasingly mystified that he can't even find the aerial...
• That Mitchell and Webb Sound: One sketch has the jerkass employees of Brown's Orthapaedic Supplies sending the work experience kid off on one of these... through the Stargate they've got in the supply cupboard. Their boss says that while it is mildly funny, no-one's seen or heard from the kid in three days. We never do learn what happened to him.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons: A sourcebook called Relics mentions a very stupid ogre king who was told by a mage he will gain respect if he'll slay a dreaded weresnipe living in a nearby cave. The king was lucky enough to stumble upon an artifact which enhanced his mind.
  • Mentioned in one of the sample dragon entries from the Draconomicom—one particular green dragon gets his kicks by capturing adventuring parties and holding their equipment hostage until they bring him back some rare or hard-to-acquire item. Whenever they come back, they find that the chimera pelt or whatever is the wrong size or wrong color and get sent out again. The game ends either when the adventurers wise up, decide it's better to just let the dragon keep the equipment than keep getting put on wild goose chases, and don't return; or when the dragon grows bored and just eats them.
• A Legend of the Five Rings supplement had a story about a Lion husband and Scorpion wife. The wife sends him on a Snipe Hunt for a left-handed widdershin oatmeal stick, which he dutifully goes looking for, day after day. On the day she invites over the ex she would have preferred to marry, but her husband barred from the house, an unscrupulous merchant sells him a left-handed widdershin oatmeal stick at a ridiculous price and he triumphantly returns...to find the guy who was barred from his house sitting in the living room. Hilarity and romance ensued.
• Vampire: The Requiem has the Carnival bloodline in Bloodlines: The Legendary, who send prospective initiates to go find "the key to the midway" (an actual carny tradition). This is generally to keep the fledgling off their backs while they assess the fellow's worth. If the fledgling refuses, they can never join the bloodline... unless it's because they saw through the trick, in which case their odds of being allowed in shoot up. A similar trick is used to divert noisy vampires who might rat the Carnival out to the Prince.

Theatre

• In My Sister Eileen and its musical adaptation Wonderful Town, Chic Clark, Eileen's reporter friend, tells her that the city editor of his paper may have a job lined up for her sister Ruth, who is desperately hunting for a writing job. When Ruth gets the call and hears that the city editor wants her to cover a boatload of coffee millionaires from Brazil who have just landed on a Brooklyn pier, she rushes off in great excitement after a few hurried preparations. Soon after, Chic pays an unexpected visit to Eileen, but she remains concerned about her sister and tells him she has to change for a dinner date she has lined up. He objects: "Excuse ya? After I went and fixed it to get ya alone without that eagle-eyed sister of yours around!" Eileen then realizes that Chic, not his editor, called Ruth to lead her on a wild-goose chase and turns on him angrily. As it turns out, Ruth does find a bunch of Brazilian admirals in Brooklyn, but they speak no English and follow her all the way back to her apartment.

Urban Legends

• A woman and her elderly mother check into a hotel room in a city that is having a large festival. The mother gets very ill, so her daughter summons the hotel doctor. The doctor tells the woman that her mother needs a rare medicine that can only be supplied by a special pharmacy that is way out on the very edge of town. The woman has to take several slow buses to get there and it takes most of the day to complete the errand. When she gets back to the hotel, she finds that the key to her room doesn't work. When she tells the hotel staff, they act like they don't know her at all and claim that the key she has is not one from their hotel. Worried about her mother, the woman insists that they let her into the room. When they do, the room looks completely different from how she remembered it, it's completely clean and empty, and there is no sign of her mother. The woman gets very upset and lashes out at the hotel staff, who call the police on her, implying to them that she is insane. But after getting her to calm down and hearing her story, the police decide to investigate the situation further. They eventually discover an elaborate conspiracy done by the owners of the hotel. It turns out that the woman's mother had a highly contagious disease, and the hotel doctor figured out she was dying from it. So he sent the daughter to the far away pharmacy in order to distract her. The mother died soon after she left, and the hotel got rid of her body and completely cleaned and redecorated the room, and then engaged in gaslighting when the woman got back. This was all done to hide the fact that there was a contagious disease being spread in the city during the festival, which might cause panic and people leaving in droves, which would negatively impact the profits of the businesses in the area.

Video Games

• BattleTech: A random event aboard the Argo may see one of your MechWarriors asking Yang to install a "B A eleven hundred N" on their 'Mech, saying another MechWarrior told them it will greatly improve stability. Watch it play out, and Yang hands over the appropriate requisition form. The hapless MechWarrior gets halfway through the N in "BA1100N" before realizing they've been had.
• In Borderlands 3 in the "Guns, Love & Tentacles" DLC, Gaige sends Claptrap to find a Pearl of Ineffable Knowledge for Alistair Hammerlock and Wainright Jakobs' wedding. Throughout the story, Claptrap gives updates on his offscreen adventures, as well as the Vault Hunter saving him from Frozen. Just before charging into the final level, he presents the actual Pearl of Ineffable Knowledge, which is a Legendary-class Artifact that increases damage with each shot done to enemies.
• In Call of the Sea, the entire hunt for Harry turns out to be one big Snipe Hunt. He's long left the island by the time Norah arrives on it.
• In The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Mages Guild ArchmageTrebonius will give you a task of solving the mystery of the disappearance of the Dwemer if you ask him for work after you've been accepted into the Mage Guild. This is a mystery roughly 4000 years in the making and no one, not even the local deities, have any idea what happened to them. By finding the right items and talking to the right people, including the last living Dwemer, you come up with a very plausible theory.
• Fallout: The Glow Quest is little more than an extended Snipe Hunt—one that's expected to kill the questant, no less. Like many examples, the place is filled with great loot (and good info on the backstory) if you buff your radiation resist beforehand.
• Fire Emblem Fates: Prince Leo reveals to his retainer, Odin, that the first few missions he sent him on were essentially requests for things made up on the spot (e.g. "find a lodestone imbued with the essence of darkness") or thought to be impossible ("defeat the spirits that slept in the Woods of the Forlorn"). Despite this, Odin was actually able to accomplish all of Leo's bogus demands.
• Genshin Impact: During the Liyue archon quests, one happens completely by accident when Qiqi requests that the Traveler's party find a "legendary adeptibeast" called a "cocogoat". When they ultimately return to her empty-handed after having no luck finding the thing, they discover that it never existed, as Qiqi mistakenly believed it to be the source of her favorite drink... coconut milk.
• Heroes of Might and Magic 4 has a passing mention of a coming of age ritual called "Snark Hunting", which basically comes down to this. It's then subverted when it turns out the heroes' quest was not one of these.
• The 2018 Summer Adventure event for Kingdom Hearts χ opens with the silver-haired red-bandana wearing wielder assigning the pink frog-headed wielder, the moogle-head wielder and your player character to find and defeat a Hermit Pretender heartless, which the moogle-head wielder says is "impossible to find." Given that you never do find one, it is apparently either especially rare or non-existent. Later your party discovers that keyblade wielders have been disappearing all around Daybreak Town and begins investigating this. After the silver-haired wielder finds out, she reveals that she assigned you a fake mission specifically to try to prevent you from stumbling onto this, because those who have been investigating it have been disappearing as well, and she didn't want this to happen to you. Possibly subverted though at the end of the event when she tells you that even though the mission was a diversion, it was nevertheless also still homework and that you're not getting your ice cream until you complete it.
• The entire plot of SpongeBob SquarePants: SuperSponge is Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy trying to keep SpongeBob (who wants an autograph from them to give to Patrick as a birthday present) away from them with several Snipe Hunts. Naturally, he keeps succeeding.
• Happens twice to the Bounty Hunter in Star Wars: The Old Republic during their class storyline. After becoming a great hunt champion the others haze them by sending them after Jicoln Cadera and Reneget Vause, who were considered uncatchable. Subverted when the player character catches them both.
• Sunless Sea: The Gant Pole is a half-mythical place supposedly in the Unterzee, where old and wounded beasts supposedly go to die, and, according to the various snipe hunts captains set up for their newest recruits, home to a distressingly large amount of lost pocket watches. As the Zubmariner expansion reveals, the place exists, and everything said about it is true aside from the part about the pocket watches. Bringing in a port report about it is bound to get you laughed at, though at least they pay well for the laughs.
• Newbie players on the X-Universe forums are sometimes told about an elusive UFO base that sells every item and ship in the game dirt-cheap. Supposedly, it's the home of the flying saucers that appear in the game as an Easter Egg. The UFO Base does actually exist—but only in X: Beyond the Frontier.

Visual Novels

• Shining Song Starnova: In one route, Kamijou sends one of his Idol Singers, the twelve-year-old Mako Yoshino, to buy an SD card from a specific retailer on the other side of Tokyo. He sends her on this errand right before her idol unit undergoes an inspection, knowing that she will miss it. He does this to protect her, as the inspector, Oda, is a pedophile.

Web Animation

• Chronicle of the Annoying Quest actually began as a Snipe Hunt. Ellers wanted to drink with his fellow paladins (and pick up chicks), but they told him Only the Worthy May Pass and sent him to kill a Black Dragon, knowing it would likely just kill him.
• Red vs. Blue:
  • In episode 3, the Red team send their rookie Pvt. Donut to go fetch some elbow grease and some headlight fluid from "the store". He returns with the Blue flag, thereby starting the plot proper. Made even funnier by the fact that he instantly caught on that they were sending him on a Snipe Hunt with the elbow grease. He is completely fooled by headlight fluid, though.
    Donut: Elbow grease? How stupid do they think I am? Once I get back to base with that headlight fluid, I'm gonna talk to the Sergeant.
  • And how did Donut even get the Blue Flag? Church and Tucker told their own rookie, Caboose, to watch their base's flag so they wouldn't have to talk to him. They justified their orders by claiming that a general might stop by for an inspection, with the vague description that the general's armor would be different from theirs. So, when Donut wanders into Blue Base thinking it's the alleged store he was sent to, Caboose happily gives him the flag, thinking that the general had arrived.
  • When Gavin accidentally mentioned headlight fluid in a podcast (when meaning to say windshield-wiper fluid), it instantly became a case of Never Live It Down.

Webcomics

• In 8-Bit Theater, after fetching three of the Elemental Orbs for Sarda, Black Mage starts to feel like the orbs are just a Snipe Hunt. When told to find the Orb of Air, he says "Oh, sure. The Orb of Air. And after that maybe we'll get the 'Orb of Headlight Fluid' and then the 'Orb of Elbow Grease' too, right?"
  • Once, to get Fighter inside a room rather than outside, Black Mage uses an old trick: a paper with "There is a map to Swordtown on the other side of this note" on both sides. Somehow, he found it.
    • Or, for some of you who won't believe it, he got into the Real Light Warriors' supplies.
  • Also, when the Warriors wanted to take over the town Mafia, they got the well-meaning Fighter out of the way by sending him off to play in a Drownball tournament (a parody of Final Fantasy X's Blitzball), where the rules are, apparently, that you have to drown in order to win. And it's unclear where the ball comes in.
    • Incidentally, Fighter won the tournament by default, since he was the only player who failed to drown, on account of his brain using less oxygen. That's perfectly logical.
• Freefall has a rather nice summary of the concept here.
  Sam: Want to know what the hardest thing in the world to find is? Something that isn't there.
• Girl Genius:
  • Agatha is sent on one. She actually manages to get the Silverodeon working again, though they'd given her the task just to keep her busy and weren't expecting her to succeed.
  • At one point, an airship crewman gets told that he's now working for the heir to his boss; his reaction is to ask one of the others if he was just "sent out for a crate of balloon juice."
  • Agatha herself sent Aedith to find a "hinge clacker" to keep her little clanks a secret. She succeeds in retrieving one, and Agatha admits she didn't need it after all.
  • When Agatha arrives at Castle Heterodyne, she isn't sent on a snipe hunt—but Wilhelm tells her that "people will have you fetching devil dog chow and left-handed trilobite tighteners soon enough".
• The "hatchet joke" in Lackadaisy. The Savoys make Mordecai Heller chop some...compromising evidence up with a hatchet. He is not happy when they tell him it was a joke. Boss Asa Sweet later asks him if the rather OCD Mordecai put the pieces in alphabetical order. After a moment of silence, Mordecai snarks, "A is for amygdala, Mr. Sweet".
• In Latchkey Kingdom the whole kingdom of Hilla goes on a snipe hunt once a year. The fact that nobody has actually caught one (despite all the booze consumed) has yet to discourage them.
• Lola and Mr. Wrinkles: Mr. Wrinkles gets Lola to stop eating his food by happening to mention his spaceship in the backyard. She runs outside to look for it, leaving the satisfied cat sitting by the dish.
• In Nip and Tuck, Tagger Beaver gets rid of the protesters by sending them off to interfere with the snipe hunt.
• In Nodwick, adventurers distract their naive cleric when they're about to abuse the henchman...by using him as an obvious distraction.
  Piffany: I didn't find the undead snipe you said was lurking in—where did Nodwick go?
• The Order of the Stick has the main characters sent on a wild goose chase to find some "Star metal" to repair Roy's sword (which was shattered in the previous arc). There actually was some where they were headed at some point in time; however, the Linear Guild assumed that it would have been claimed by other adventurers by now, not to mention it wasn't even needed to repair the sword. They do find it, though; however, it turns out to be a chunk about the size of a pebble—but later, it turns out that that chunk is actually enough to reforge Roy's sword with a +5 bonus and undead slaying abilities.
  • Durkon has technically been in a Snipe Hunt since before the start of the comic: a prophecy foretold that Durkon's return to his home would cause the destruction of the dwarven homelands. Therefore, his superiors sent an unknowing Durkon to the human lands and told him not to return until they called him back. Another Oracle foretold that Durkon eventually WILL return...posthumously. Now that Durkon has become a vampire...
• In TwoKinds, exiled Basitins are allowed to return to the Basidian Islands on the condition that they complete an "impossible" task. Keith, for example, had to return with Trace, the ruler of the Humans at the time.
  • If that doesn't sound too bad, we should probably mention that Trace was one of the most powerful Mages in the setting... and a tyrant with an ax to grind against anyone non-human. Fortunately for Keith, a fight with a goddesses before the start of the story had hit the "Reset" button in Trace's memory, and the now Nice Guy Trace saw no reason not to let Keith take him to Basitin.
• Terminal Lance has a guest strip in which Abe actually manages to find many of the mythical items listed under Real Life, including the ever-elusive Schmuckatelli.

Web Original

• KaleCo Auto is an entire website of these, presented in catalog form.
• Not Always Right:
  • This anecdote involves someone being sent to find a 120-volt flux capacitor.
  • Not Always Working has an example of a snipe hunt that went wrong, since the "snipe" turned out to be a very real (and very expensive) specialty item which the manager pulling the prank might have plausibly wanted.
  • And another instance of this kind of prank backfiring. In this case, the "victim" realized almost immediately that he was being set up and, instead of playing along by looking for the snipe, just went home to slack off until his prankster boss actually needed him back.
  • Another flux capacitor example. In this case, the pranksters were fascinated to hear their co-worker outright lying to a supposed customer, rather than admit he didn't know what one was.
• In Shadow of the Templar, Team Templar sends Dave on one of these when he's first assigned to the team: find a way to break into Rich's computers. Although they eventually accept him as one of their own, they forget to tell him to stop. And are therefore doubly shocked when he announces that he's succeeded.

Web Videos

• In Suburban Knights, The Nostalgia Critic prevents Ma-Ti from joining the quest with various snipe hunts. First, he tells Ma-Ti to stay back and guard the children and elderly... that don't exist (that's what makes the task so difficult). Then, when Nostalgia Chick "loses her contact lens", Ma-Ti must stay behind and search for it. He eventually finds someone's contact lens (exactly whose it is isn't made clear), but still can't join the group because Mickey has erectile dysfunction, which can only be cured by goat porn, which Ma-Ti must go forth and find. This gets to be so blatant that the last request is simply for Ma-Ti to get the Critic some coffee. After Ma-Ti sacrifices himself at the end of the quest, the Critic finds the coffee set on the hall table at his place.

Western Animation

• In the American Dad! episode "American Dad Graffito", when Stan plans to reinvigorate interest in The '50s to prevent his favorite '50s-themed diner from closing, he tries to get Klaus out of the way by asking him to retrieve a bronze statue of the Fonz. At the episode's climax, Klaus is shown to have succeeded.
• In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Zuko's task of finding the Avatar, who had been thought dead for a century, was essentially just this. All this is courtesy of his Evil Overlord father Ozai, who personally scarred and banished his own son. Ozai never believed the Avatar was dead or has disappeared from existence—he was that hard to find; if he, his father and grandfather tried and failed, what chance would his own son have? To drive the point home, Zhao, acting with the full authority of the Fire Nation, moves to keep Zuko from continuing his hunt when it becomes clear that the Avatar actually has returned.
• Camp Lazlo has all the campers on a literal snipe hunt, but the animal described sounds more like Bigfoot. Edward's brothers' past hunts lead him to conclude snipes aren't real. The others mistake Lumpus for a snipe. Then two real snipes hatch from eggs that had fallen into Lumpus's throat at the end of the episode.
• In The Cleveland Show, Robert and Freight Train send Cleveland on one of these. Cleveland catches on when he realizes that he's literally chasing wild geese.
• In the "Operation: F.U.G.I.T.I.V.E." episode of Codename: Kids Next Door, Numbuhs 1, 2, and 4 are ordered by Numbuh 86 to guard a dandelion in the DCFDTL's garden from any adult's attacks to prevent them from following her and Numbuhs 3 and 5, since she thinks the boys will get in the way. When the boys decide to go after the fugitive to prove her wrong, Numbuh 4 places the flower in a pot and takes it with him.
  • In "Operation F.A.S.T.F.O.O.D.", Numbuh 3 wants to lead a mission for her birthday. Because Numbuh 3 is The Ditz and a Cloudcuckoolander, Numbuh 1 tasks her with the duty of...getting a kids meal from a fast food place. Things get out of hand when they learn that the restaurant's proprietor is an old enemy of the KND and its most frequent customers are sharks.
• Disenchantment: In episode 7, Bean sends the knights of Dreamland off to find Elfo's Girlfriend in Canada. The knights all know it's a Snipe Hunt, but figure they have to go anyway. Then they actually find someone matching Elfo's description.
• One episode of Donkey Kong Country has multiple snipe hunts...all surrounding the same trinket.
• On Doug, the titular character's introduction to Bluffington involved being sent out to find the fictitious "Neematoad". He avoided any embarrassment when his dog, Porkchop, got covered in pond scum and the natives mistakenly believed he had succeeded in his impossible task.
  • The nematode is actually quite real, but nothing like the creature described in the episode.
• On The Fairly OddParents!, Timmy sends Wanda away so Cosmo can prepare for their anniversary. The task in question? Getting a cat trained.
• Family Guy:
  • In "The Son Also Draws", when Peter — after Lois gambles away their car at a Native American casino — claims he has Native American blood, management has him go on a vision quest to prove it. Subverted, as Peter has a vision (or at least an insightful hallucination), even though his claim to Native American ancestry was a con and none of the actual Native Americans figured he would have one — and immediately start whining that they want a vision quest now.
    • This actually plays off of the fact that vision quests and spirit guides are not exclusive to Native Americans. Tradition generally holds that everyone has a spirit guide and that anyone can go on a vision quest.
  • In the episode where Chris becomes an artist in New York, his manager decides that his family is an embarrassment and decides to get rid of them for the afternoon so they don't cause trouble at a party. When Chris asks where they are, he tells him that they decided they would rather wander around Soho for hours looking for an address that doesn't exist. Chris chuckles and fondly replies "That's my dad!"
• In the first episode of Invader Zim, the Tallest assign Zim to a "mystery planet" on the edge of known space. In truth, they didn't even know if there was a planet out there (they pointed to a post-it note on the edge of their map that reads "Planet?"); they just wanted to get rid of him. Unfortunately for them, Zim stumbled upon Earth and continues to call them up with annoying reports about his "mission".
• Kim Possible
  • In "The Twin Factor", Drakken puts a Mind-Control Device on Shego and amuses himself by telling her to go find a dodo bird. This almost bites him in the butt when he doesn't notice Kim approaching his supervillain lair until she's almost there:
  Drakken: Kim Possible! How did she get so close? Why didn't you tell me??
  Shego: I was looking for a dodo bird.
  • In another episode, Warmonga is tricked into going away when one of the Tweebs, wearing a blue mascot outfit, convinces her that he (not Drakken) is the real "Great Blue" and that she should meet him on Pluto.
• An episode of King of the Hill involves Bobby and his friends being sent out to hunt snipes and accidentally injuring an endangered whooping crane instead. Oops. Hank and his friends had it pulled on them in the backstory and don't seem to know even as adults that the snipe is a real bird and think it's some kind of imaginary animal.
  • The description is similar to the conventional fictitious description of a "snipe" for the purposes of snipe hunting. So that part is Truth in Television.
    • The use of the snipe hunt itself tends to lead people to believe that the snipe is a fictional creature, rather than an actual bird.
• My Life as a Teenage Robot: In the episode, "Teen Idol," Jenny/XJ-9 accidentally crash-lands on an alien planet, which causes the inhabitants to treat her as a "Comet Goddess." They then follow her back to her school on Earth, much to her annoyance, but are willing to do anything she says. Jenny then asks them to find a grain of sand shaped exactly like (the head of) Abraham Lincoln. Not only do they accomplish said task, but they also manage to bring in an entire gymnasium's worth of "Lincoln sand."
• Phineas and Ferb: In the episode "Undercover Carl", Monogram sends Perry on a mission to find a goose that has gone missing for years, after mistakenly thinking Perry's owners were in league with Doofenshmirtz. At the end of the episode, Perry actually finds the goose (who was on vacation).
  • In "Great Balls of Water", Candace is briefly shown on an actual snipe hunt during her "Extraordinary" musical number.
• Stimpy of The Ren & Stimpy Show is sent on a snipe hunt in the woods to prove his worth after the duo joins a Girl Scouts offshoot. When a skeptical Ren opens Stimpy's bag, he gets mauled by the big, hairy, bug-eyed monster that emerges.
• The Simpsons: In "Homer Goes To College", during a safety audit, Homer and two other less-gifted employees are put in a room out of the way and given the task of guarding a bee in a jar. The other two question it but Homer, thinking himself brighter than the other two, boasts of his position as "head bee guy". He then immediately breaks the jar, releasing the bee, and gets discovered by the inspectors.
• In an episode of South Park, Kyle wants to go to a rock concert. His parents agree to let him go only if he can accomplish a long list of tasks ending with "and bring democracy to Cuba". He actually manages to pull this off, only to be told he still can't go, as his parents admit they only made him the offer because they honestly didn't expect him to succeed.
• SpongeBob SquarePants
  • The pilot has Mr. Krabs and Squidward send SpongeBob on a fool's errand for "a hydrodynamic spatula with port and starboard attachments and turbo drive" to keep him from getting a job as fry cook at the Krusty Krab. Astoundingly enough, he shows up with one near the end of the episode. ("Can you believe they only had one in stock?") Lucky for Mr. Krabs and Squidward too, since SpongeBob uses it to save them from a pack of unruly anchovy customers.
  • In "Squidward the Unfriendly Ghost" when Squidward pretends to be a ghost and orders SpongeBob and Patrick around:
    Squidward: I want something else to eat now. Something that's very difficult to find.
    Patrick: What do you hunger for, master?
    SpongeBob: Whatever you want, we'll find it, we'll find it!
    Squidward: Cherry pie. (Patrick holds up a pie from behind his back) Where'd you get that?
    Patrick: I found it.
    Squidward: [throws pie off screen] Well, go find it again!
  • In "Scavenger Pants", Squidward sends SpongeBob and Patrick on several errands of this nature to keep them busy so he has some alone time. When they succeed at every last one, he sends them on a seemingly impossible quest to find his long-lost brother, who doesn't exist, and they still technically succeed at that by becoming his adoptive brothers.
  • In the app SpongeBob: Krusty Cook-Off, in Chapter 1, Squidward tries to get SpongeBob and Patrick to leave him alone by participating in a seemingly nonexistent jellyfishing contest; however, only Patrick can do it because SpongeBob has to work the pancake stand. As it turns out, there really was a jellyfishing contest, and Patrick shows the trophy he won to prove it.
• Star Wars Rebels: In "Fighter Flight", because Ezra and Zeb have been fighting, Hera sends them on a supply run to fetch needed items and a meiloorun fruit—a real item, but impossible to find on Lothal. Things get somewhat out of control after they try to steal some from the Empire, and accidentally end up stealing a TIE fighter instead. Ironically they lose the other supplies they'd been sent to get, but do return with a single meiloorun fruit.
• In Steven Universe, the Ruby squad comes to Earth searching for Jasper. By the time they get there, Jasper is not exactly in a state where Steven wants her to be found, so he tells them that Jasper went to Neptune. As these Rubies are Super Gullible, they immediately head off to Neptune. However, it only works temporarily: they return later in the season, as they somehow conduct what they feel to be a thorough search of not only Neptune but every planet in the solar system save Earth, without finding Jasper.
• The Cartoon Network short series The Talented Mr. Bixby has the title character substituting for auto shop class. He gives the students an impossible essay, or they can go to the auto parts store and get a jug of blinker fluid. Most of the class dashes out, leaving Mr. Bixby alone with whom he thinks are the smart ones. They aren't. Everyone but the guy who strapped rockets to Mr. Bixby's van, anyway. As the students leave the room, they actually pass a sign that says "NOTICE: Blinker Fluid Does Not Exist". They come across an identical sign at the auto parts store and stare blankly at it.
• Thomas & Friends; "Timothy and the Rainbow Truck": Bill and Ben convince Timothy that he needs to find a rainbow-colored truck. He travels a long way before realizing he's been had, but Salty helps him get back at the twins - by giving them a smelly, old, garbage-filled truck splattered with multiple colors of paint.
• In one episode of Timon & Pumbaa, a pair of cheetahs trick the hyena trio on a literal "wild goose chase" so they won't get in the way of the cheetahs' hunting. The hyenas figure everything out at the end and are all set to eat the cheetahs — now rotund and helpless after all of their feasting — when suddenly a real wild goose appears asking for directions. Cue everyone, hyenas and cheetahs alike, chasing after the bird.
• In an episode of Zigby (a preschool-age series broadcast in Canada and Australia, but also available on DVD, about a zebra), Zigby stages a scavenger hunt to help people clean up. A group of monkeys, who are keen on ducking work, decide to play a trick by pretending to be Zigby and telling a couple of Zigby's friends to go find a wild goose. Technically, that makes it a wild goose chase, but essentially, it's a snipe hunt.

Real Life

• This is common in most fields of employment as a welcoming ritual (also commonly known as hazing) and a list on The Other Wiki catalogs the most common items involved, of which the "long stand" or "long weight" (not, as the hapless newbie eventually finds out, a supporting structure or weight of greater than average length) is perhaps the most celebrated. This can be used to their own advantage by savvy employees who know the joke but pretend to fall for it, so they can head out for a coffee or a nap for a couple of hours on the company's nickel.
• This is apparently very common in the military. Examples from The Other Wiki, at least for the US Navy, include:
  • DCA Horn (as in "blowing the DCA," who is the Damage Control Assistant, an officer).
  • On submarines, non-qualified individuals are sent on a variety of snipe hunts, from finding serial numbers on water shots (equivalent to dry-firing a firearm), to finding the ninth hose station (this one depends upon the class of sub as different classes have varying numbers of fire hoses).
  • B-1RD (pronounced "Bee-One-Romeo-Delta") or C-GU11 ("Charlie-Golf-Uniform-One-One")
  • PEN-15 or ID-10-T ("Eye-Dee-Ten-Tango") forms.
  • Since the actual code for most batteries starts with "BA", a newer one is to send someone for a form to purchase a "Bravo-Alpha-Eleven Hundred-November" battery. (BA1100N, Balloon), sometimes with a Sierra-Tango ring (a "S-T-ring", a balloon with a string). The proper response if you know the joke is to ask if they want it blown up or not.
  • Newbie mechanics in aircraft hangars in all branches may be asked to go and fetch a bucket of Propwash. For the uninformed, propwash is the term for turbulence behind an aircraft created by a propeller (or in the case of Jetwash, a jet engine).
  • As an extention of the joke, some military PX's do actually sell bottles of "propwash." They're just bottles of water with fake labels, but they're often given as gag gifts to departing unit mechanics. Naturally, every so often a naive newbie will wander in, excited that he's finally found what his superior sent him to get.
• Other snipe hunts include being sent for sixty feet of waterline, or for batteries for a sound-powered phone.
• The U.S. Navy’s Equator-crossing tradition involves—among many other jests—placing the uninitiated on a watch schedule with binoculars to look for the big red line...
• For bridge types, asking someone to polish the "relative bearing."
• In the aviation community, sending the new guy to take "exhaust samples" by way of holding a trash bag up to the exhaust vents of turning engines. Hilarity ensues. Or how about sending the new guy to Maintenance Control for the keys to the airplane?
• Best real-life subversion was when a fellow recently transferred from the Army to the Air Force was sent out to get "100 yards of flight line". Turns out that A) he used to be a Combat Engineer, B) his former unit was based in the same town, and C) Combat Engineers love playing pranks. A quick phone call resulted in a big pile of busted up tarmac being delivered to his new unit's office.
  • The US military uses the PRC designation for radios, such as the PRC-77, pronounced "Prick Seventy-Seven". Thus, it is common to send the poor PFC or Lcpl to go find the "PRC-E7". Now, consider that E-7 is the rank designation for a Gunnery Sergeant, or Sargent First Class and the PFC or Lcpl will inevitably ask "the Gunny" where it is...
  • Another naval tradition was to go to the engine room to get a BT Punch...a BT being a Boiler Tech...
  • Fresh Finnish marines might be asked to fetch the key to the wake water tank.
  • US armored cavalry regiments sometimes send newbies to find the key for the turret lock on an Abrams tank. The lock exists, the key doesn't.
    • Sending them off to supply for a spool of "Bore Wire". There's no such thing as bore wire.
    • Not to mention the classic gag of giving them a hammer and some chalk to find and mark the soft spots in the armor.
    • And when the newbie finally begins to get wise, you ask him to check the windshield washer fluid. When he balks—thinking it to be another snipe hunt—you check the fluid levels yourself and berate him for not doing so. (Yes, Abrams tanks DO have windshield washer fluid.)
  • Instructing new soldiers to jump up and down on a 50+ ton armored vehicle to test the suspension.
  • Artillery units will often have a new soldier perform a "Boom Check" by placing their face against the muzzle of whatever cannon is available and yelling boom.
  • Send a new soldier away to find a container of coolant for a machine that is air cooled. (See the '71 Beetle example below).
  • A popular Marine prank involves asking a newbie to go somewhere where Marines might congregate and ask the guy in charge for a "stack of 0311s", whereupon everyone in the room will dog pile on the hapless newb. 0311 is the USMC Military Occupational Specialty Designation for infantrymen (aka everyone).
• Newly-hired firefighters in California will often be sent to retrieve the hose stretcher (fire hose doesn't stretch), check the engine's spark plugs or brake fluid (almost all fire engines are diesel-powered and have air brakes), or locate a Sloan valve (which would be the flush valve on a urinal, manufactured by Sloan Plumbing Supply).
  • Another time-honored method of fucking with the new guy, especially in rural areas, is the Firewatch. The FNG is posted outside after dark, possibly on the roof, but always in the open, and ordered to keep watch for any fires on the horizon. The new guy may or may not have been warned about Chupacabra or other possible dangers, and the rest of the crew may or may not sneak around making ominous noises while the new kid freaks the fuck out.
  • There's also the old "Where's the Water Hammer" routine.
• A common snipe hunt is sending rookies looking for left-handed versions of naturally ambidextrous implements, like a left-handed javelin or a left-handed screwdriver.
  • Left-handed Allen wrenches work especially well, as other things called wrenches often do have handedness.
  • Left-handed smoke shifters are fun as well.
    • Day of the Tentacle featured a left-handed hammer, needed to solve a problem involving mirror image twins.
  • The "Left-Handed Spanner" is such an old and well-known variation that pretty much everyone should be wise to it. Doesn't mean other left-handed tools that don't have left-handed variations aren't fair game.
• Another famous one is sending them out to look for tartan paint.
  • A similar anecdote tells of a new hire sent for checkered paint. The newbie constructed a cardboard grid, inserted it into an empty paint can, filled the squares alternately, and then removed the cardboard. It wouldn't stay that way for too long, but it worked long enough.
• In Spain, Portugal, and Cuba, the equivalent of a snipe hunt is hunting "gamusinos"/"gambuzinos", an even more jerkish version, since (unlike the snipe) the gamusino does not even exist. The term ultimately comes from the Provençal word "gambozi", meaning "lie".
• Many a new employee at Microsoft has been sent to a meeting at Building 7 (where all the important decisions are made).
• It's an initiation ceremony in German military as well. Among weird stuff to find (like a key for the supply room which, in the German military, is a part of the battlefield rather than an actual room), noobs are sent all about the base with an open container of 'highly dangerous battery fluid', which is usually simple juice consumed finally by some superior.
• Germans absolutely love their snipe hunts. In the automobile field, there are examples such as blinker fluid, gearbox sand (good thing the rookie most likely won't get any), the piston retraction spring or the bag of ignition sparks (but it has to be the blue ones).
• Another example of keeping children away while the grownups get down to business: in rural Sweden, back in the good old days, a child, deemed too young to witness the slaughtering of a large animal, would sometimes be sent to the neighboring farm for some non-existent tool that the adults claimed to need before they could start. The neighbor, being, of course, in on the joke, would send the kid even further away, and so on until somebody decided that the poor kid had been running far enough and confesses that the tool isn't needed. When the child gets home, all the gory and icky stuff has already been taken care of.
• Working in stores or grocers, powdered water (Just add water!) is a favorite item. A clever person might respond to this by bringing back some snow or shaved ice.
• It used to be that strapping young electricians were sent to fetch one-farad capacitors, that being a ridiculously large value for the actual components. Nowadays, though, you can probably find one for under fifty bucks.
• The Oil Patch is also full of these. From pipe stretchers and buckets of steam to "Push Slaps" (the Rig Manager is also known as a "Tool Push"), "Glasses for the Blind Rams" (blind rams are a set of hydraulic rams used to close off the well completely), or the "Key to the V-Door" (the V-Door on a rig is the metal slide that drill pipes ride on when brought up to the floor).
• Actor Nicolas Cage proposed to future wife Patricia Arquette on the day they met. She gave him a list of extremely rare things to find, saying that that's what it would take to win her. When he started to actually find the things on the list, she got scared and avoided him. They still went on to marry (and divorce), however.
• Being sent to retrieve the keys to the lean-to.
• Newbies to shop classes and technical theater work calls are sometimes sent to fetch a replacement level-bubble or a wood stretcher.
• In Israeli youth movements, the traditional "snipe" is "electricity powder". This one works in the Israeli armed forces too. Another thing they ask you to get is a glow stick charger.
• A radiator hose or water pump for a '72 VW Beetle. For those readers not familiar with Beetles, the originals had air-cooled engines, not radiators.
• Often, when Cub Scouts go to Boy Scout Open Houses, there will be a snipe hunt. This is the nice person kind, so the teenage Boy Scouts will pretend to have caught a snipe, and show up later with a glued shut box with a rock in it, claiming that the snipe is in there.
  • First-time Boy Scouts will often be sent off for left-handed smoke-shifters, bacon stretchers, or some other mythical item on their first campout with their new troop. One popular item used to be a solar-powered flashlight. Not so much anymore.
• Elbow Grease is sometimes used for hapless rookies who are unaware of the term "put some elbow grease on it."
• Even the fast-food industry has some of these. New hires at the local McDonald's will often be asked to go get "more steam for the bun steamer".
• A common prank in the sailing world is to send a raw hand to the marine supply shop for fifteen yards of shoreline.
  • In Finland, if a novice sailor gets too nosey, the skipper will send him to fetch him a "spörbeli", a non-existent item which has always been stored in the most difficultly accessible place in the yacht. When the novice goes to fetch it, the skipper will then perform a nasty manoeuvre, such as a gybe. (Kudos points to the novice sailor who actually finds an existing but seldom used item, such as the motoring cone or anchor ball.)
• New hires at baseball parks used to be asked to fetch the keys to the batter's box, a left-handed fungo bat, or 100 feet of foul line.
  • One traditional snipe hunt involves getting a newbie to go fetch a "box of curveballs". Can backfire if said newbie returns with Wiffle balls.
• In addition to left-handed tools, a popular snipe hunt among welders, machinists, and mechanics is a brass magnet or a put-on tool i.e. the opposite of a metal cutting tool.
• In the film industry, it's a C-47. (A clothespin.) There will be clothespins on a film set because wood conducts heat poorly, so they're used to gel lights and that sort of thing. But it's fun watching the littlest production assistants run around with haunted looks in their eyes. There's also a practical purpose to using Insistent Terminology—if you want to get rid of someone, you can tell them to get a C-47, and if they don't know what it is, you can yell at them for not knowing how to do their job and fire them on the spot.
  • Can easily backfire though, if the victim is a history buff, and caught on to the plan (or was warned ahead of time by someone higher up), you might end up with this showing up on the set.
  • Another common joke in the camera department is to send someone for a "box of T-stops". The T-stop is the rating of aperture opening on the lenses.
  • Asking a newbie to wash the gels. For those who don't know, gels are colored films placed in front of lamps to provide colored lighting effects. A gaffer or best boy would tell the newbie to wash the gels and give them some very complex and difficult-to-remember instruction on how to do so. Nowadays, gels are colored plastic, but back in the day, they were made by adding food coloring to gelatin and letting it set in a thin film, hence the name. As a result, they dissolved when washed, casing the newbie to think he had done something wrong and panic. Hilarity Ensues.
• A common one at auto shops is to tell the newbie to find spark plugs for a diesel engine. For those who don't know, diesel engines don't have spark plugs.
• Once in a great while, this sort of thing can backfire; for example, some adjustable wrenches have caliper-like measuring scales on them, meaning that a "left-handed metric Crescent wrench" is actually something that could exist, albeit not in any way meaningfully distinguishable from any other wrench.
• On occasion, a creative sort might use this as an opportunity to prank his tormentors. One new soldier, sent by a Corporal to get some chem light batteries, went to the PX, bought a case of chem lights, went to his barracks, cut each one open and removed the glass bulb inside, and then returned to work (after spending several hours sitting around his barracks doing nothing, of course). Be cautious of doing this towards a superior who turns out not to have as much of a sense of humor as he thinks he does.
• In the Russian army, they would send a newbie for a bucket of liquid transmission. Or a bucket of compression. Or pressure. Or correction. Or something else that does not exist as a physical substance.
  • Another variant is "spark plugs for a KamAZ" (a diesel truck that does not have any spark plugs in it).
  • Other examples include "a bucket of deviation" (in communication units), "a jar of clitoral oil" or "you're called by Rimma Pudendi" (for medics: while Rimma is a common Russian woman's name, "rima pudendi" refers to pudendal cleft; the cleft between two labiae major of female genitals), "a glass of decibels" or "a bucket of mercury" (for physics students), and "keys from lava" (in mining).
• German math and physics freshmen are sometimes sent to find the Minkowski or Banach Raum due to "Raum" meaning "room".
• In broadcasting, a newbie or intern might be sent to find the chroma keys. A more involved version might require them to go to another station to get them (who have, of course, been let in on the prank in advance and might send them to yet another station).
• Newbie EMTs often wind up getting sent to find the Fallopian Tubes. For obvious reasons, this usually only works on male EMTs and helps weed out the ones who actually paid attention in the OB-GYN section of their certification course.
• In carpentry, the new guy might be asked to find a "wood stretcher".
  • Might backfire if the new guy is also an art student, since wooden stretcher BARS are quite common for them.
• After Toei Company screened Battle Royale for their lawyers after the Columbine massacre, they were told that, if they tried to release it in the US, the resulting lawsuits from Moral Guardians would outweigh any potential box-office or home video earnings. As a result, Toei created a series of wildly unreasonable demands for any potential American distributor, stating that Battle Royale, an extremely violent, subtitled Japanese film whose subject matter would make it a lightning rod, would have to receive a national cinema release and an advertising campaign to match instead of the "select arthouse theaters" route that foreign cinema in the US normally takes. Needless to say, no distributor was willing to do that, so the film never saw an American release until 2012, when a combination of the passage of time and the success of The Hunger Games led Toei to drop its demands and sell the American rights to Anchor Bay.
• One subversion is to use this as a way to let savvy subordinates skip out of work or avoid an uncomfortable situation, such as by ordering them to leave the shop an hour or two early and drive to the far side of the base to see if a particular building is still standing. The subordinate departs, nominally to go perform the errand, and proceeds to go home instead.
• It used to be a common prank to assign newbie engineers to develop an inside-frosted lightbulb because at the time it was believed to be impossible to make such a lightbulb without it being too brittle. This came to an ended when one victim of the prank actually succeeded.
• For IT rookies, it's the Wi-Fi cable or the scanner cartridge if scans are too pale.
• Some pipeline rookies are asked to go and "get a container for the gas drops." The naive rookie will begin searching for a bucket. The savvy rookie who paid attention in training will realize that 'gas drop' is a test procedure to determine if your system is sound or has a leak somewhere by using pressurized gases to detect if the pressure in the system falls faster than expected.
• When a new percussionist joins an ensemble, particularly in middle or high school ensembles, older members will ask the newest person to go find the "tacet" in the percussion closet. A tacet is not an instrument, but a word written on the page to indicate that the player does not play anything during that movement or piece.
• A prank can be to blindfold somebody, and challenge them to find an object which is not there, to see how long it is before they realise.

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