The Bait

Timon: So what's your plan for getting past those guys?
Simba: Live bait.
Timon: Good idea—HEY!
Simba: Come on, Timon. You guys have to create a diversion.
Timon: What do you want me to do, dress in drag and do the hula? [Gilligan Cut to him doing exactly that] Luau!

— The Lion King (1994)

The Heroes need to lure the Big Bad into a trap.

For this you are going to need bait. While you could use a MacGuffin, we all know that the best bait is live bait.

But who is going to take on this wonderful job?

If you're the Heroes then you need to look for volunteers. There are two versions that pop up. The first is one of the Heroes agrees to be The Bait risking a Heroic Sacrifice. The other version is for the resident Butt-Monkey or Chew Toy to become a Less Than Willing Volunteer. A common resulting conversation in a Five-Man Band is as follows:

The Hero: I'll be the bait.
The Lancer: What are you talking about? I'll be the bait, you need to lead the attack. Just make sure you don't screw it up, 'cause if I end up dead I'll kill you.
The Heart: If this is to succeed it will need both of you. I'll be the bait. (It's all I'm good for anyways.)
[Hero and Lancer strenuously disagree with this idea.]
The Big Guy: I could be the bait.
[Everybody else looks at him like he's crazy because who would even think of the Big Guy as bait?]
Comic Relief Guy or The Smart Guy: Hey, don't look at me, I'm not gonna be the bait!

Of course, the bait ends up being The Smart Guy (Cue the "Why do I always have to be The Bait?" whining) or The Heart. Occasionally it will end up being The Lancer, which is more likely if he and The Hero are Rivals.

Sometimes the argument between Hero and Lancer will get so fierce that, instead of volunteering to be bait, The Heart or whoever will just sneak out and make themselves bait, while the argument rages on. Or possibly the Hero or the Lancer may decide to use Percussive Prevention on the other so they can do it themselves. If anyone insists there is no way they will act as the bait, expect a Gilligan Cut to prove them wrong.

Villains usually just get themselves a hostage for bait—although occasionally a Mook will get stuck with the job. Being villains, they usually are not happy about it.

Super-Trope to Serial Killer Baiting. Compare We Need a Distraction. Sometimes overlaps with Why Are You Looking at Me Like That? on the part of the bait.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Attack on Titan, this is the standard operating procedure, where one group distracts the titan and the second group (usually more skilled) goes for the kill. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't.
  • Mikasa ends up being decoy for the Female Titan as Levi demonstrates why he deserves his title of Humanity's Strongest.
  • Armin uses this to deal with the titans invading the supply room.
  • This is the primary mission of the surviving soldiers in the Battle of Trost, to lure the titans to the opposite side of the city so the elite team can plug the wall.
  • This turns out to be Eren's true role in the 57th Expedition, with Erwin secretly using him to lure out titan shifters infiltrating the military.
• Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo: During the fight against Not Nice Cream, Bo-bobo proposes a "Plan Z", in which the heroes use Jelly Jiggler as bait for their foes… and then abandon him. Jelly, naturally, refuses the plan before they can even put it into motion.
• Code Geass: Lelouch Lamperouge uses his Geass to make himself forget that his partner Suzaku is sneaking towards the detonator connected to the bomb keeping his sister hostage. Using himself as a bait to distract the Mind Reading Mao to buy time for Suzaku to get close enough to catch Mao without him realizing it.
• Dororon Enma-kun: In one chapter, everyone fights over who has to be The Bait to catch a Youkai. Nobody wants to be it, but Dororon, Yuki, and Chapeauji finally agree on Kappaeru, who is still refusing. However Hitomi took pity on him and volunteers. Given the followings events, maybe she should have shut her mouth.
• In one Crossover movie between Great Mazinger and Getter Robo, Boss plays bait to lure a monster to a deserted island.
• Hellsing: The Major uses First Lieutenant Rip Van Winkle as bait to draw Alucard away from London, trapping him aboard the ship she commandeered using his weakness regarding running water to keep the powerful vampire away from London as the Major's forces make their assault on the Hellsing headquarters and London itself.
• In Mazinger Z, often Kouji volunteers to be The Bait. Sayaka, too. Boss is more willing or more reluctant to play bait depending on the situation.
• On the rare occasions on Pokémon: The Series where the kids need live bait for a plan, they either go for Team Rocket or Ash. The giant Claydol has Ash and James (dressed as eggplants no less).
• Queen Millennia: Yayoi figures that his uncle knew Hajime would be targeted, but left him be, expecting the Millennial Thieves would kidnap him and Hajime would point them to the Observatory where they can be caught. How to rescue Hajime afterward was barely considered.
• Sword Art Online: Alice, after learning that the Big Bad is specifically targeting her, offers to serve as the bait for his forces. Alice's commander, mentor and father figure Bercouli agrees, but insists on accompanying her.
• Yakitori: Soldiers of Misfortune: Unit K-321 is about to be destroyed by a Spider Tank when it gets blown up by Space Marines, who mockingly congratulate the 'Yakitori' for acting as decoys. However the tank is still active and opens fire on the marines, so the K-321 uses them as decoys so they can sneak up and destroy the tank for good. Later they're pinned down by another spider tank and Akira points out that someone has to act as bait again, as there are no friendly units nearby. He's annoyed when everyone assumes that as he came up with the idea, then he should be the bait. They destroy the tank only for another tank to pin them down, whereupon the same marines from earlier turn up in Awesome Personnel Carriers for a Big Damn Heroes.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds: In one flashback episode, Team Satisfaction set a trap to ambush the Magician's Four. Unfortunately for Crow, he has to be the bait. (It isn't revealed who decided he'd get that role. Fortunately for him, the plan worked.)

Comic Books

• Batman: As part of the Gambit Pileup during the assassination tournament Red Robin decides to use himself as bait since he knows he's been made a target and calls Cassandra Cain for backup, and to pretend to kill him in order to "win" the tournament after rescuing him from the other participants.
• Sin City: Marv draws Kevin out into a series of traps by firebombing his house. Dwight draws Manute and his men out to a back alley by using Miho's archery skills.
• In Supergirl storyline Starfire's Revenge, the eponymous Queenpin poses in society and fashion magazines as the mysterious and rich beauty Starfire to lure Supergirl out and into a trap.
• Superman:
  • In War World, Superman volunteers to test how powerful Warworld's missiles are. Later on, he keeps the satellite's defense systems occupied while Supergirl gets ready to attack.
  • "Brainiac Rebirth": Superman uses himself as a bait to lure Brainiac to the Sun.

Fan Works

• Eternity: Nagato was the flagship of Operation Ten-Go instead of the damaged Yamato, and was captured by the Americans. Knowing that keeping her as a war trophy will enrage the japanese, they intentionally set her up to be a kamikaze bait, with William D. Porter as a lone escort. Despite orders to let the suicide bomber do as they wished, Willie D's Captain ordered them shot down since Nagato's skeleton crew haven't evacuated yet. This was the start of their friendship in their future lives as shipgirls.
• Scarlet Lady:
  • When Marinette suggests that they need a way to distract Mr. Pigeon, Scarlet Lady promptly thanks her for "volunteering" for the role.
  • Zoé offers to help the heroes out by distracting Malediktator. Once again, Scarlet Lady is all too happy to accept — though in this case, she's mainly relieved that Zoé isn't insisting on being taken to the "safe place" she'd supposedly taken her alter ego Chloé to.
  • Zoé also does this against Queen Wasp, much to the heroes' horror, as they're unaware in that moment that she's already passed the Ladybug Earrings safely to Alya.
• A Flashback in Shadowchasers: Torment shows Nichole as a young girl following her brother—who's been running with gangs—without his permission, and having to watch as he's beaten up by a rival gang. Then it turns out that he was the bait for an ambush on the attackers by his gang members. Her brother tells her sternly to listen to him next time, although his friends tell him not to blame her, seeing as it can't hurt. (A crucial turning point in Nichole's life was when she had to choose between this type of life (which her brother didn't recommend) and something better. She chose the latter.)
• Vow of Nudity: In her origin story, Fiora baits a band of gnolls into chasing her so she can lure them into axebeak territory.

Films — Animation

• The Land Before Time: The main characters (minus Cera) have a plan to kill the Sharptooth by leading him near a deep area of water and dropping a rock over him. They immediately choose Ducky to act as the bait.

Films — Live-Action

• In The Final Girls, one of the rules of the horror movie is that the Serial Killer always shows up right when someone's about to have sex. Even a woman taking her top off is enough. So the protagonists set a trap, and the slutty party girl starts dancing to lure him in.
• In Jason X, a virtual reality simulation meant to distract Jason creates a pair of scantily clad teenage girls who exclaim (among other things), "We love premarital sex!" (It works, temporarily.)
• Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight II: The group's initial plan to kill Zosia is to have one of them stand outside and lure her to them so the rest can open fire on her. The one who fills this role is Janeczka.
• Prey (2022): A group of French trappers tie Naru and her brother to a tree in order to lure the Predator out. This backfires spectacularly as the Predator has absolutely no interest in tied up prey that can't fight back and completely ignores them to slaughter the trappers. Naru pulls a more successful version of this later with the French leader. Having realized both that the Predator sees their body heat and only hunts worthy, armed prey, she uses a flower to lower her body temperature and makes sure that the Frenchman will be holding onto a (sabotaged) musket.

Literature

• Avalanche Express by Colin Forbes involves Western intelligence escorting a defecting Soviet general across Europe on the Orient Express. The Soviet wartime sabotage network along the route is activated to kill him, giving counter-intelligence agencies a unique opportunity to round up these cells in peacetime.
• Agatha Christie often had the villains of her books caught in sting operations where someone would offer to play the bait in order to trick the murderer into trying to kill them. Examples include The Moving Finger and A Murder Is Announced.
• J. R. R. Tolkien's Beren and Lúthien: Lúthien and her loyal wolfhound Huan need to lure Sauron out of his fortress in the Isle of the Werewolves in order to rescue Beren. Their plan? Lúthien will stand in the middle of the bridge and will sing a magic song which will shake the whole island as Huan lies in ambush behind one pillar. When Sauron feels her power and sends his wolves out to catch the maiden whom he has been trying to capture for a long time, Huan will pounce and kill them until Sauron runs out of troops and is forced to deal with them personally.
• In "Clockpunk and the Vitalizer" it's Clockpunk herself who comes up with the idea and decides to be the bait for The Vitalizer, whose tirade will hopefully stop if he believes she's the Bull he's seeking.
• Conan the Barbarian:
  • In Robert E. Howard's story "The Devil in Iron", Octavia is used to lure Conan.
  • In "The Frost-Giant's Daughter", the title character lures Conan into a trap—and discovers this is not wise unless you know that your defenders can take him.
• In The Fatal Dream, Steven's cousin Charles volunteers to be this when it becomes apparent that he is the Pteranodon's next target.
• The House of Night: Rephaim gets volunteered as this for Stevie Rae in Tempted.
• Both played straight (with Tracy) and subverted (with Lindsey) in Into the Storm. The girls' employer is conducting training sessions against Navy SEALS, and at different times they get tapped to play the hostage. In Lindsey's case, she was told to make sure both teams lost by sneaking out of the field.
• In Jack Campbell's The Lost Fleet novel Invincible, Geary sets up the fleet in a compact formation to provide the bear-cows with a nice, neat target.
• Mrs. Smith's Spy School for Girls: When Abigail's mother, Jennifer, goes off the grid, Mrs. Smith's plan to lure her out is to have Abigail walk around in open areas and hope she comes to her.
• Star Wars Legends: During the Yuuzhan Vong invasion in New Jedi Order, Jaina Solo used herself as bait to lure the Vong into a trap in the Deep Core; it was a success, destroying the Vong fleet and scoring a big victory for the New Republic.
• In Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive, Sadeas' bridgemen are this. They charge the enemy lines, unarmored and unprotected, carrying a bridge to span the chasm the army needs to cross. The Parshendi fire on them, but Sadeas fields so many bridge crews that they rarely kill enough to make a serious dent. Furthermore, while the Parshendi are killing bridgemen, they aren't killing soldiers who are far more expensive to equip and train.
• The Tripods: In order to capture one of the Masters, the protagonist rides a horse (painted green to catch their attention) past one of their Tripods, and when it gives chase lures it into a hidden pit.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • In Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts novel First & Only, Larkin wanders into the Jantine Patrician quarters and runs when he spots some of them. They give chase and are struck down by his companions. Only then does Larkin complain that he always gets to be the bait.
    • And in one of the short stories that make up the majority of Ghostmaker Bragg (The Big Guy of the Ghosts) is used as "big dumb trooper" bait to get a traitorous supply convoy driver to feel safe enough to tip off his bandit friends to raid the convoy.
  • In James Swallow's Blood Angels novel Deus Encarmine, Iskavan is told that his force has been sacrificed as bait to draw the Blood Angels in—and is jeered at for not even being able to die when he ought.
  • In Chris Roberson's novel Sons of Dorn, Captain Taelos suspects something about his being left with the scouts on-planet. He learns in due course that the rest of their force had lurked until the scouts had drawn out the full Chaos force (and died nearly to the last man).
  • In the Astra Militarum novel Baneblade, the taskforce led by Mars Triumphant is this, distracting Ork forces from one side while other Imperial forces attack elsewhere.
• The Voyage of the Space Beagle. The Ixtl has been abducting people to serve as hosts for its eggs, so the crew of the Space Beagle act as bait to lure it into an ambush of forcefields and atomic disintegrator rays. Unfortunately a crewman in the line-of-fire panics and, instead of throwing himself to the ground, opens fire on the weapons crew. This ends up killing a whole bunch of people and tips off the Ixtl as to their plans. The captain had advised the 'bait' not be armed for exactly this reason, but was overruled by the expedition commander, who ends up getting killed himself in the disaster.
• Warrior Cats:
  • In A Dangerous Path, the way that the ThunderClan cats decide to deal with the dogs loose in the forest is to set up a relay line of cats for the dogs to chase toward the gorge; Fireheart is at the end and hopes to either veer away at the last moment or leap into the gorge himself to get them to fall in.
  • In Twilight, a pair of vicious house cats has been causing trouble for ShadowClan, attacking and killing any that they can catch on their own. To lure the cats out into the forest and away from their Twolegs, Tawnypelt pretends to be injured and alone while her Clanmates lie in wait.
  • In Sign of the Moon, Jayfeather volunteers himself as bait to lure an eagle down to the ground so that the ancient Tribe cats can learn to hunt birds of prey.

Live-Action TV

• Bait duty debates happen a lot on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and usually Xander gets the job, being as he's the Butt-Monkey of the series.
  • This was reversed at the beginning of season three: Because Buffy was "absent", the Scoobies had to work without her, and the role of bait was passed to Cordelia. Subverted when Xander and Cordelia are too busy arguing over this, they fail to notice the vampire is sneaking up on Willow.
  • In Season 4, the Initiative is searching for Spike and come across Buffy sitting on a park bench, waiting for Spike to come and challenge her. Unaware of her superhero role, the soldiers get into an argument over whether to use this hot-looking chick as vampire bait. Riley Finn, who fancies Buffy as a Love Interest, refuses to play along, and so tries to persuade Buffy to go home. Hilarity Ensues as each tries to get rid of the other (Buffy is equally ignorant of Riley's demon-fighting role) while waiting for Spike to jump out of the shadows. As before, said vampire ends up attacking Willow instead.
• CSI: NY: In "Criminal Justice", Lindsay protects a witness from a murderous perp by going to the young woman's apartment at night, dressing in a bathrobe with her hair in a towel, and watching tv on the couch with her back to the door. When the knife-wielding assailant breaks in and tries to sneak up behind her, she jumps up with her service weapon drawn on him.
  Lindsay: Expecting someone else?
• Doctor Who:
  • "The Lazarus Experiment": Martha and her sister Tish do this to lure the mutated Professor Lazarus up to the bell tower of Southwark Cathedral, where the acoustics will be just right for the Doctor to use the cathedral's organ to revert him to human form.
  • "The Witch's Familiar": Missy uses Clara to get a Dalek's attention so she can sneak up on it. "You're the bait, I'm the hook."
  • "Arachnids in the UK": Graham serves as bait when he and Ryan are sent out to capture one of the abnormally large spiders roaming a hotel.
• The Mandalorian. In "The Marshall", the Tuskens demonstrate to Mando and Cobb Vanth how they've been placating the Krayt Dragon by periodically sacrificing a Bantha to it. A Tusken Raider leashes a Bantha in front of the cave, shouts at the dragon to wake it up, then makes a run for it. The dragon comes out of the cave... and eats the Tusken, leaving the Bantha perfectly fine.
  The Mandalorian: They may be open to fresh ideas.
• Power Rangers:
  • In Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, the first time Rita Repulsa's brother Rito Revolto appeared, Rita "suggested" that he lead a gang of monsters against the Rangers. Actually, he was meant to be the bait for an ambush by said monsters, which wasn't mentioned until he had left. (This actually proved a far more clever plan, because while the villains actually scored a victory there, when Rito did face them by himself the next time, he had his ass handed to him.)
  • In Power Rangers Lost Galaxy, Damon ends up playing the bait/decoy at least twice, and is vocally unhappy about it both times.
• In Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Sailor Venus takes on this role for much of the show. She sees this as a good use of her life because she has a terminal illness and knows she'll reincarnate before long anyway.
• Used for a Bait-and-Switch gag in Shadow and Bone. The Conductor tells the Crows to buy a goat for when they're crossing the Shadow Fold, which is assumed to be bait for the flying monsters that exist there. Turns out it's in case one of their own panics—they can then pet the goat to calm themselves down.
• In Smallville, Chloe and Lana sometimes do this voluntarily, despite Clark's protests.
• In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Obsession", the plan to draw the vampire cloud with a tank of blood goes awry when the cloud consumes the blood before the antimatter bomb is ready. Kirk orders Ensign Garrovick to beam up while he stays to bait the creature, Garrovick instead tries to knock him out and take the risk himself. They both end up serving as bait until beamed up just in time.
• Supernatural: Sam and Dean sometimes use someone as bait when they don't have a better plan. Bait duty (if necessary) usually goes to Dean (unless there's some reason it has to be someone else), both because he looks the part more (Sam's got three or four inches on him) and because if he can keep Sam out of danger, he will.
  • In "Unforgiven", Sam discovers that while soulless, he used a Victim of the Week as bait to catch the Monster of the Week. Unfortunately the victim has come back as a demon and wants revenge.
• Titans (2018). Jason Todd thinks this is why Robin wears his colorful costume, so he can distract the villains while Batman sneaks up and does his thing. He's entirely OK with this, whereas Dick Grayson (the previous Robin) is not, having a more cynical attitude to his former mentor.
• Wellington Paranormal:
  • Sgt Maaka tries to attract a ghost cop's attention with a bit of malicious bell-ringing, in order to lead him back to the Mount Victoria tunnel (on foot no less). Once they catch up in the car, Minogue and O'Leary ask the ghost what else was illegal in the 30's and become the bait by very slightly 'speeding' at 16mph.
  • Parker and Maaka pretend to be an attacker and a victim, in order to lure the zombie cops to jail.
• Wonder Woman: Steve Trevor's main job. In "Fausta the Nazi Wonder Woman", Steve is gassed by Fausta and locked in a crate solely to draw out Wonder Woman and watch her beat up some Mooks. Later in the same episode, he's chained to a wall to capture Wonder Woman with crushing walls. She's stronger than the walls and the engine pushing the walls together. In "Knockout", Steve spends the entire episode tied up and in the evil terrorist's clutches. Thus dooming the group to be destroyed by Wonder Woman.

Music

• In the song "Captain Beaky" by Keith Michell (on the album Captain Beaky & His Band (Not Forgetting Hissing Sid!!!), Vol. I), Captain Beaky uses Timid Toad as bait to lure out the snake Hissing Sid. The plan works, although not in the way it was originally intended.

Tabletop Games

• The function of several cards in Magic: The Gathering. One of the best examples is the Taunting Elf, which has the ability that when it attacks, everything capable of blocking it has to. This can be used to allow all the other creatures to attack unimpeded or to lure out a creature that normally wouldn't be used as a blocker. Since the elf is a 0/1 and thus, unless enhanced, is incapable of dealing or taking any damage, it generally doesn't survive the process. Of course, you can enchant with something like Venom to make it kill everything that blocks it (a combo sometimes called "Creature Sweeper", since it will sweep all your opponent's creatures off the board).
  • Some strategies are built around getting your opponent to take the bait and then swooping in for the kill.

Video Games

• In 16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds, player character Lucy is the designated bait for her team of vampire slayers.
• A villainous example is used by Hawke in Advance Wars: Black Hole Rising. In the mission Sea for All, Black Hole CO Hawke sends Orange Star CO Andy a letter challenging him to a battle in a specified location. Naturally, Andy accepts so he can prove to Hawke that his troops are better than his and also proving that he is no coward. When Hawke defeated by Andy, he gracefully bows out and Andy celebrates, only for Nell to scold Andy for abandoning the front he was supposed to protect since it's now overrun by enemy forces. Hawke staged the fight as bait so Black Hole could advance in Orange Star territory.
• Dante's Inferno: Beatrice. The whole "drag one innocent human's soul into hell" thing was just a means of getting the ultimate killer in the Crusades, strong enough to kill a grim reaper after dying, to inadvertently break Lucifer's chains scattered around Hell.
• In Deep Rock Galactic, this is practically mandatory in missions with the "Haunted Cave" modifier, which adds an Unknown Horror that will stalk you the entire mission, even digging through the cave walls after you. This makes accomplishing your objectives almost impossible unless some unlucky dwarf (usually a Scout thanks to his Grappling-Hook Pistol) keeps kiting the Horror around a large room while the rest of the team carries on.
• This was the reason the villains went after Kyrie in Devil May Cry 4. They wanted to use Dante to power the Savior, but weren't quite equal to the task of capturing him, so after Agnus discovered that Nero had demonic power of his own and a relationship with Kyrie, he and Sanctus used her as bait to lure Nero into their trap so that the two of them could be used instead. Additionally, Sanctus brought her out of The Savior to catch Nero off-guard and steal the Yamato from him.
• Digital Devil Saga: As part of luring Bat into a trap, the Embryon decide to have Argilla disguise herself as Sera in order to lure him in. Argilla is fine with it, as she is more than capable of taking care of herself, but Cielo's reaction is to point out all the telling elements of Argilla's Paper-Thin Disguise.
• In Dragon Age II, Isabela's personal quest in chapter 3 requires her to take on the role of bait.
• A long and cherished tradition in EVE Online. Poorly-equipped ship flown by a 'newbie' presents easy kill, enemies go for kill, react in surprise and alarm as six battleships jump in and snipe them to death. Heartwarming.
• Half-Life 2: Episode One's second half consists mostly of Gordon and Alyx holding this role. Having copied data from the Citadel that the remaining Combine forces are hell-bent on recapturing, when the two meet up with other Resistance forces making a push towards the train station to get out of the city, Alyx suggests those forces take the direct path while she and Gordon take a longer alternate route to draw as many Combine forces away for as long as possible.
• Taunt creatures in Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft force enemies to attack them until they die. If the taunt creature has a good attack stat, that can end badly for the enemy.
• Hitman: 47 is turned into bait twice. Both times in order to get him close to an otherwise unreachable target.
  • In the final mission for Hitman: Blood Money, "Requiem", Diana serves 47 up, apparently deceased, on a silver platter. Throughout the game, The Franchise has wanted its hands on 47, although every attempt they made to lure him out failed. Diana, being a double agent, incapacitated 47 with the fake-death serum and called the head of The Franchise, Alexander Cayne, to arrange a funeral where 47 would be cremated, thus leaving The Franchise as the only agency with a superior clone and denying any future agencies access to 47's DNA. Cayne easily took the bait, and 47 awoke after Diana administered the cure and proceeded to kill every single person attending his funeral.
  • The endgame of Hitman 3 has 47 sedated by Diana in order to reach Arthur Edwards. With 47 incapacitated, Edwards takes him with the intent of injecting him with the memory-wiping serum again, making 47 subservient to Edwards. 47 wakes up, makes his way up to Edwards, and puts him out of commission for good, allowing Diana to completely dismantle Providence.
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sees Teba filling this role for Link; he flies around drawing the fire of Divine Beast Vah Medoh's cannons while Link destroys those cannons with Bomb Arrows.
• Mass Effect:
  • In Mass Effect 2, Shepard is used as the bait by Samara to lure her serial killer daughter into a place where Samara can safely kill her.
  • In the third game's ''Citadel' DLC, Shepard uses Joker as bait when CAT6 starts shooting up the sushi restaurant by telling him to go warn the crew, then grabbing and killing the first merc who sees him to acquire a weapon. Joker is pretty furious about it.
    Joker: You used me as bait? You used me as bait! Did everybody see that? Savior of the Citadel uses the brittle bones guy as bait!
• A common use for light 'Mechs in MechWarrior multiplayer games due to their small size, high speed, and light armor making them very tempting targets. Even called out explicitly in the opening of Mechwarrior 3, where Lance Leader's Vulture is crippled, and he has to make a snap judgement call, assigning his two tiny Firefly scouts to bait an enemy Thor into an ambush. Proving why being the designated bait is never fun, Firefly 1 gets away with a sneak attack, but Firefly 2 is blown apart in a single shot.
• In Oninaki, Kagachi keeps the Mysterious Waif Linne around in order to lure the Night Devil his way.
• Resident Evil:
  • Resident Evil 3 (Remake): After Jill plots a route for the evacuating subway trains, she uses herself as bait to draw Nemesis away from the subway station to buy time for the UBCS and the civilians they're escorting to escape. It works for the short term, but when Jill boards the train Nemesis follows...
  • In both Resident Evil 4 and its remake, Ada attempts to fight Saddler to get his attention away from Leon while he rescues Ashley. This goes poorly for her and Saddler, instead of killing her, ties her up hanging from some scaffolding to lure Leon out into a fight. In the remake, Leon recognizes this as a trap, but in both games leaves Ashley behind to rescue Ada anyway. Sure enough, just after he's able to get her down, Saddler attacks Leon.
• A common strategy for Klingons in Star Trek Online, both in Player-versus-Player combat, and as NPCs. Since all Klingon ships can cloak, one of them will fly around as bait, while the rest cloak. When the enemy ship flies in, expecting to deal with a single target, the rest decloak and begin curb-stomping.
• Tales Series:
  • In Tales of Symphonia, while infiltrating the Remote Isle Ranch, the party has one person (the party member with the lowest affection) serve as the bait for the soldiers coming out of a door while Lloyd and the party member with the highest affection ambush them.
  • In Tales of the Abyss, late in the game, the party is investigating whether Largo the Black Lion is Natalia's real father. Since they want to keep Natalia out of the loop, Jade suggests that Natalia take a distraught Anise around the marketplace. Tear disapproves of using Anise as the "bait", but in the end, Anise simply asks for a full report on what they heard in her absence.
• A villainous example in Tears to Tiara 2. Izebel use the freaking Kraken as bait when she intercepts the party on the high seas.
• A staple tactic in the X-COM games, once you develop soldiers with Psychic Powers. Who would you rather send first into the Fog of War to draw the enemy's attention, an irreplaceable Colonel Badass, or a Mind Controlled alien? Later games such as XCOM: Enemy Unknown let you be more creative by giving soldiers abilities that make them immune to attacks in certain circumstances, while XCOM 2 lets you hack enemy robots for more expendable bullet-sponges.

Visual Novels

• In Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, Chiaki is tasked with acting as bait in Chapter 5 during Kazuichi's ill-fated plan to apprehend the unstable Nagito. The entire thing doesn't work, however, because Nagito knows about the plan beforehand and promptly ruins everything by blowing up the hotel.
• Played With in Double Homework. The plan to break into Dennis' apartment naturally requires that everyone knows precisely when he'll be out. Since Amy is his favorite out of all the girls in the summer school class, they recruit her to talk to him and learn when he won't be home.
• Kissed by the Baddest Bidder:
  • On Soryu's route, the protagonist volunteers to pose as Mei Ling and let whoever's after her kidnap her so that Soryu and the guys can find out who's responsible and track them to their leader. Soryu is not happy about putting her at so much risk, but reluctantly agrees for lack of better ideas when the protagonist makes it clear that she trusts him to get her through it in one piece.
  • In Soryu's sequel, he ends up using the protagonist as bait to draw out the traitor among the Ice Dragons - this time without her knowledge. She's not happy about it when she finds out afterwards, but forgives him since he wasn't happy about it either and took every possible measure to protect her.

Web Animation

• Double Subverted in Lackadaisy. In the middle of a Car Chase Shootout, Marigold Gang driver Nico presumes that rival Lackadaisy booze-runner Rocky has climbed onto Lackadaisy car's trunk to bait them into a confrontation as he nonetheless moves to ram Rocky and company. For his part, Rocky is actually desperately trying to keep his booze-filled car trunk from popping open, but appears to realize in real-time how he can exploit his position. In a stare-down with Nico, he ducks just as he hears his cousin Freckle's maniacal laughter. Freckle pops up at the rear window wielding a freshly assembled and loaded Tommy gun, and proceeds to blow away Marigold's windshield, causing them to back down. Nico and his sister Serafine actually find this hilarious.

Webcomics

• In Blue Yonder, Jared wants to escape to the open so that the attackers who took his parents and sister will come after him. He succeeds.
• In Endstone, Pablo proposes it, for dragons.
• In Darths & Droids, Han and Luke propose using the entire moon of Yavin 4 as bait for the Peace Moon, so that it can be vulnerable while charging its superlaser.
• In The Far Side Of Utopia Peter is clearly trying to bait the people looking for him to come after him, as he had no other reason to use his real name (he can clearly make fake ones, since he did for Mium).
• Because pretty much everyone in Nerf NOW!! thinks that Girl on Girl Is Hot, Chun-Li and Kammy are able to use themselves as bait in this comic.
• In Nodwick, this role is in a henchman's job description.
• In Pacificators, Cinna was forced to become The Bait in order to draw away Rendo away from his comrades. It's, thus far, one of the funniest scenes in the entire work.
• The Remarkable Rabbit Boy: The character Foxline gets her bones broken by the powerful villain Bloodarm, and figures out that the only reason Bloodarm didn't instantly kill her instead is because he wanted to use her as bait to lure out the main character, Rabbit Boy, who Foxline had ordered to hide.
• Schlock Mercenary: When there are nanite-converted supersoldiers running around trying to turn scientists into more supersoldiers, the mercenaries put the survivors all in a single room and have them lay down on the floor.
  Scientist: Shouldn't we be somewhere safer? Why are we out in the open?
  Tailor: This way, we can see all the entrances and have clear lines of fire on any hostiles.
  Scientist: Wait... we're bait!
  Tailor: Don't be ridiculous.
  Schlock: (into comm) Sir, the bait is panicking.
• In Yokoka's Quest, Mao uses Kalliv in mouse form to bait the king centipede into biting him, so he can shoot a fireball inside its mouth.

Western Animation

• In Batman Beyond episode "Final Cut", where Society of Assassins member Mutro Botha persuades (okay, blackmails) Terry into helping him apprehend Curare, Botha doesn't see himself as bait for the plan, but Terry clearly does. (It ends very badly for Botha, but it's hard for anyone to feel sorry for him.)
• In DuckTales (1987) episode "Launchpad's First Crash" a matriarchal tribe hunts giant crabs using their diminutive men as a bait. When Scrooge and Launchpad arrive, all the men have just had it and left, thus amazons use Scrooge and Launchpad. In the end Granta tells that men and women reconciled with each other and now take turns as a bait.
• Jonny Quest TOS episode "The Invisible Monster". In order to lure the title creature into the trap, Dr. Quest must act as the bait. He turns on a flashlight to lure his energy-eating opponent to its doom.
• The animated Punky Brewster debut episode "Punky To The Rescue" had Margaux posed as bait to catch a supposed swamp monster that Punky thinks kidnapped Henry.
• Scooby-Doo and Shaggy usually get elected to be the live bait in catching the week's villain in a monster suit.
• The Simpsons: In the "King Homer" segment of "Treehouse of Horror III", Mr. Burns and Smithers bring Marge to Skull Island to use as bait for King Homer, which leads to an awkward situation for Burns when they get there:
  Marge: Am I coming too?
  Burns: Of course! We wouldn't dream of going ashore without the bait...Er... ing... beauty, the... bathing beauty! That's it. (Aside, to Smithers) Think I covered that rather well...
• Both April and Michelangelo serve as bait for less intelligent mutants in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012). Mikey even fails to notice what's happening on one occasion and just thinks the plan is an excuse to wear a silly costume.
• In Ultimate Spider-Man (2012), Norman Osborn tricks Spider-Man into becoming bait, so Osborn can take down the Frightful Four. Spidey's not happy when he realizes that he was tricked into becoming bait.

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