Too Good to Be True

Double fantasy!

"If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."

— Old Saying

Genre Savvy characters are often aware that, in real life, perfect outcomes to practically anything are extremely rare. Whether the asking price for something at Honest John's Dealership is just a little too low to be believable, that ravishingly lovely lady throwing herself at the protagonist claims to have an extremely unlikely fetish for guys matching his specific description (which incidentally includes the word "ugly"), or some present situation just plain seems to be a little too wonderful to be real, the character's instincts tell him something must be wrong. Somebody must be getting screwed here, and if he can't determine who's the patsy, that somebody is probably himself.

If whatever scenario that seems too good to be true turns out to be true, expect this to be made clear only after the Wrong Genre Savvy character has irreversibly walked away from it. Just ask Bart.

Such instincts, more often than not, tend to be sound: Honest John's name is a misnomer and that product he's trying to unload for next to nothing is actually a liability to its owner, which is why he's trying to get rid of it; that lovely lady is a Honey Trap or worse and plans to deliver her victim to his worst enemies to be tortured to death; and the reason things are going so well is that one of the protagonist's enemies is setting him up for a terrible fall from the heights of his greatest triumph. Note that this instinct is common in characters from all parts of the moral spectrum, though heroes tend to be targeted for this kind of deception a lot more than villains. Also, while high intelligence tends to coincide with this instinct, characters who are Too Dumb to Fool are especially likely to be appropriately skeptical that they could really be on an endless lucky streak.

As much as this instinct often proves to be Truth in Television, the Rule of Drama dictates that it's even more likely to be an accurate appraisal of the situation in fictional works, since an ideal situation in which everything goes according to plan leaves no room for Conflict, and without conflict, there's no story. Many Delusion Conclusion theories frequently hinge on this instinct; even if a series of improbably convenient events in a work aren't explicitly proven to be too good to be true, the ubiquity of this trope will lead more cynical fans to speculate that the narrative intended this to be the case implicitly, hence all those fan theories about the events secretly being All Just a Dream or part of some wishful Dying Dream. Considering how very often this instinct expresses itself to both the characters and the audience, let there be In-Universe Examples Only on the main page for any given work to which this applies, please. Audience Reactions expressing this instinct can go on the Fridge Logic tab.

A Con Man's skill often lies in convincing the mark to ignore this instinct, especially when it comes to a Get-Rich-Quick Scheme or a cheap item that Fell Off the Back of a Truck. For cases in where a character thinks this falsely about someone, see Sheep in Sheep's Clothing.

Sub-Tropes:

• Awful Truth: What you find out instead of the thing you thought was good.
• Bait the Dog: The moment where a Jerkass seems to have sympathy, only to be the polar opposite.
• Broken Pedestal: A character's idol is revealed to be not as flawless as they thought.
• The Con: A very appealing opportunity, as presented by someone who's out to fleece you from your money.
• Deal with the Devil: A most tempting offer that turns out to have a horrible price attached to it.
• False Utopia: A seemingly perfect paradise hides a terrible secret.
• Get-Rich-Quick Scheme: The favorite tale of every Con Man.
• Hope Crusher: A character who enjoys shattering people's illusions.
• Hope Spot: The moment where our protagonists experience some optimism, only to go right back to the struggle (or worse).
• Hope Is Scary: The cynical belief that whenever things seem to be going well, they're about to go south.
• Kaizo Trap: The game kills you just when you thought you had defeated the boss or level due to a last minute trap.
• Nothing Can Stop Us Now!: The stock phrase used by characters who are about to be stopped now.
• Orgy of Evidence: In crime and mystery stories where a case seems a little too open-and-shut, it's likely a Red Herring.
• Pleasure Island: You didn't think you were going to get to indulge all your baser impulses for free, did you?
• Retirony: It seems like finally the character will be able to retire from his life of adventure, so naturally he dies three days before retirement.
• Safe Zone Hope Spot: Thank goodness, our heroes are safe from the monsters! Oh, wait...
• The Schlub Pub Seduction Deduction: A beautiful woman coming onto an unattractive man must have ulterior motives.
• Spoiled by the Format: It seems like everything is resolved, so how come there are 40 minutes left in the episode?
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Characters think real life is going to work out like a story, only to face some cold hard facts.
• Suspiciously Clean Criminal Record: Someone's total lack of any history of wrongdoing is too conspicuous for it to be true.
• Suspicious Videogame Generosity: Look at all those power-ups and extra lives! And behind that, one heck of a boss battle / obstacle!
• Tempting Fate: Remarking on how good something is will persuade the universe to make it go wrong.
• Thwarted Escape: If you're close to successfully escaping, chances are you'll be caught at the last moment.
• Too Awesome to Use: It's so cool (and supplies are so finite) that to use it would be to waste it, so you may as well not have it at all.
• Too Cool to Live: An awesome character is likely to become a Sacrificial Lion.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Don't get too attached to lovable innocent characters, either.
• Too Good to Last: When a show is too great, it's bound to be Screwed by the Network.
  • The Firefly Effect: Leads to an audience becoming too suspicious to invest in another promising new series.
• Too Happy to Live: Everything's going well for a character at the beginning of the story? Well, that has to change.
• What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: When everything seems to be going well, saying this phrase will trigger Finagle's Law. (Leading to Genre Savvy characters who say it sarcastically.)
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: You thought your quest was completed so soon? Think again!

Please add In-Universe Examples Only.

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In-Universe Examples Only:

Anime & Manga

• A Certain Magical Index: Touma gets extremely suspicious when he wins a lottery prize for an all-expenses-paid vacation in Italy for two. Given his legendarily bad luck, he thinks this could only be happening if everything is going to go horribly wrong. Which, of course, it does.
• Expecting to Fall into Ruin, I Aim to Become a Blacksmith: As part of Kururi getting Identity Amnesia, while visiting the capital, he runs into Iris, who yells at him angrily (this having been because Iris had a dream where Kururi was running away from her). And so Kururi runs and hides like a fugitive, thinking from Iris' reaction that he must have done something evil or perverted to her in the past. Wanted posters are left out for Kururi assuring that they mean him no harm, but Kururi thinks it's a trick meant to kill him.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Phantom Blood: Johnathan grows concerned as Dio begins showing acts of respect towards him over the years despite the early animosity, and upon finding a letter indicating Dio poisoned his father, realize he's now doing the same to George.
  • Diamond is Unbreakable: Josuke voices his doubts to Okuyasu about how all the meals from Antonio causes bizarre effects to heal his body. Subverted in that while Antonio is a Stand User, he's really a benevolent chef.
  • Golden Wind: As the group is about to take off in a private plane, another of Diavolo's elite guard, Carne, arrives to kill them. Mista immediately guns him down with ease, but Giorno feels that something is amiss considering how quickly things subsided. Giorno's suspicions come true when it turns out killing Carne activated his Stand and its now roaming the plane to consume them.
  • Stone Ocean: After supposedly defeating Johngalli A, Jolyne begins noticing how several events during the battle were just too off. Her handcuffs suddenly vanishing, finding a hidden passageway, and Jotaro's injuries immediately healing clued Jolyne that she's actually trapped in an illusion conjured by Pucci's Whitesnake.
• Kain Blueriver in Lost Universe gets offered a rather well-paid and seemingly easy job by Rail Claymore, but turns it down suspecting there's more to it than Rail is saying. After Rail spills the beans (he wants them to escort a key witness in a trial of a mob boss, that is sure going to be targetted before the trial), Kain mentions that Rail could have fooled him had he offered half the sum he mentioned, but his grandma always told him to watch out for deals that seem too good to be true. They end up having to take the job anyway because Millie signed the contract without asking.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion: This is one of many deconstructed character flaws present in Homura Akemi, as it is how she realises the idealised Mitakihari was a Lotus-Eater Machine. Yes, even in an ideal world created by her own mind she cannot rest happily.
• Rebuild World: Usually from Akira's Virtual Sidekick Alpha.
  • When Akira discovers an untouched ruin, and gets in and out with his Lost Technology loot without encountering any opposition, knowing that Akira is Born Unlucky, Alpha thinks this to herself. Sure enough, on his way back, other hunters retrace Akira's steps, and accidentally flood the ruin with monsters, leaving the ruin strewn with corpses and filled with monsters when Akira returns.
  • When the high-strung villainess Chloe desperately tries to butter up Akira, she sends him an email sounding way too generous, which makes Alpha send a copy paste reply like she does to any other Spammer. This results in a sleepless Chloe tracking down Akira in hysterics.
• Run with the Wind has the Kansei University dorm, the current residence of the main characters. It has lodging, meals and the rental price is relatively cheap. Sounds like a bargain, right? Unfortunately, it turns out the full name of the dorm is Kansei University Track and Field dorm. Being in the track team is obligatory for all tenants.
• Sailor Moon: Naru quotes this when her mother is oddly into selling the store's expensive jewelry at high discounts. Good for business, but odd. It turns out that Morga replaced her mother and the real jewels with clever fakes that steal the customers' energy.
• SSSS.GRIDMAN: When Yuta, Rikka, Sho, are sent into a Lotus-Eater Machine by Akane's Monster of the Week, Yuta senses something is off besides his bout of amnesia and that Akane knows what it is; Rikka isn't convinced by Akane's attempt to play Alexis' appearance off as normal and isn't fazed by the reminder she's been made to love Akane; Sho, despite his attraction to Akane and a dream date bonding over Kaiju merch realizes it's a little too perfect because this kind of luck wouldn't happen.
• Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs: The help Leon offers to his fellow poor noble boys in the Academy earns this reaction.
  • When Leon offers refurbished airships he captured to the boys, Leon reacts to them thinking there must be a catch like sub-standard designs by saying it's a Publicity Stunt for his factories. They should have Read the Fine Print however, as the airships can only be repaired and maintained by Leon's factory, which allows Leon to later tell them "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word, getting their noble houses to fight under his banner. This is partially Leon’s revenge for them being Fair-Weather Friend to him prior.
  • In the Alternate Timeline Marie Route, Leon convinces Marie to be The Matchmaker for the boys at the price of a Comically Small Bribe of pudding (when it’s basically saving the boys from being a Made a Slave or Cannon Fodder). They ask Marie if pudding is some kind of jargon they don't know. Thanks to this, they feel honestly indebted to Leon and Marie, and thus form the nucleus of Leon's political faction.

Films — Animated

• In Aladdin: The Return of Jafar, Abis Mal is offered tons of treasures in exchange for using his third wish to set Jafar free from genie servitude. Initially, Abis Mal is elated by all the treasure. But just as he's going to make the wish, Abis Mal remembers that Jafar has been a complete Jackass Genie the entire time they've known each other. If Abis Mal sets Jafar free, what's stopping Jafar from making all his treasure disappear the moment he's loose? Indeed, right after Abis Mal asks this question, Jafar makes an Implied Death Threat.
• In Ducktales The Movie Treasure Of The Lost Lamp, when Scrooge finds the lost treasure of Collie Baba, Merlock and Dijon, who was acting as Scrooge's guide, steal the treasure from him and leave his group trapped on a pillar that's lowered into a scorpion pit. Scrooge moans that he should've seen the double-cross coming because Dijon's price to act as guide was surprisingly cheap.
• In Pinocchio when the Coachman takes Pinocchio and the other boys to Pleasure Island, Jiminy Cricket walks around observing the place which seems to be a child's paradise: you can eat whatever you want, play carnival games and go on rides, smoke and drink alcohol, and destroy the place, all without interference from authority figures. As he sees all this, Jiminy thinks "there's something phony about all this". He's right; Pleasure Island is a trap for unsuspecting boys who are encouraged to behave badly so they will transform into donkeys, and the Coachman can sell them into slavery.
• Winnie the Pooh believes that he can spend every day of his life with Christopher Robin playing and enjoying their peaceful life in the Hundred-Acre-Wood together. It's understandable since the entire franchise until Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin had usually featured the two together playing in every episode, short, or movie. Then at the beginning of that movie, Pooh discovers to his dismay that this is unfortunately not the case, as Christopher Robin must start attending school. In his song "Wherever You Are", Pooh laments that he "used to believe in forever, but forever's too good to be true". At the end of the film, after a Darker and Edgier adventure full of Break the Cutie, Eldritch Locations and the like, despite his reunion with Christopher Robin, Pooh has realized that they can't always spend every day together anymore.
• In Turning Red, when Mei decides to keep her giant red panda form, one of her aunties, Lily, expresses this sentiment having suspected Mei was not being truthful about suppressing the transformation in the weeks prior to the red moon ritual.
• Fun and Fancy Free: Subverted in the "Bongo" portion of the movie where, after meeting and having a Falling-in-Love Montage with Lulabelle, Bongo is heartbroken when Lulabelle continuously slaps him, taking it to mean she's rejecting him in favor of Lockjaw, her Stalker with a Crush and starts to leave the forest. Turns out, however, that slapping one another is a bear's way of saying "I love you". Upon realizing this, the ecstatic Bongo races back and faces Lockjaw in a final showdown.

Films — Live-Action

• A shop owner in Cone Heads admits to having suspected the truth all along when his incredibly industrious new employee Beldar admits to being an illegal alien (which technically he is, though the shop owner is unaware of just how alien he is).
• The Dark Knight Rises: John Daggett hires Selina Kyle by promising her access to something he calls "the Clean Slate", a computer program that can erase her criminal record. When the deal goes south, he mockingly asks her, "Sound a little too good to be true?"
• Glass Onion: Miles hypes up his new product Klear, a clean hydrogen energy source generated from seawater. It's cheap and easy to produce, and his luxurious private estate on the island is already fully powered by it. Unfortunately, as Lionel keeps warning him, it has one very obvious weakness: it's extremely flammable.
• The Matrix: Agent Smith discussed how this trope thwarted the machines' earliest efforts to build a Matrix that was intended to be a utopian Heaven-on-Earth for humanity because humanity just wasn't buying it: "It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost." He speculates that this distrust for perfection is inborn.
• As one of the investigators in Minority Report points out, the cops' discovery of an "Orgy of Evidence" actually makes him more skeptical that they're pursuing the right suspect (and he's right, sort of).
• In Muppet Treasure Island, when Captain Smollett told Long John Silver and the crew to go ashore and take as long as they needed to get provisions, Polly Lobster noted that, since they had the Treasure Map, it was "giving the treasure to [them] on a silver platter!". Silver concurred, before adding "Never trust a silver platter". Sure enough, Smollett had been warned by Jim of Silver's planned mutiny and planned to set sail once the pirates were ashore. However, Silver took out an insurance policy - by shanghaiing Jim.
• Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022): Knuckles thinks that he and Robotnik are friends, until Robotnik steals the Master Emerald and reveals to Knuckles that they were never friends, and that he was only using him.
• In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, John calls his foster parents to see if they're safe from the T-1000. What initially tips him off that's something's not kosher is that his foster mother is being far nicer to him than she ever has before, since normally she's fed up with his juvenile delinquent ways. Sure enough, the T-1000 has already replaced her, and is in the middle of killing off his foster father as well while they're talking.
• Discussed in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; British intelligence has just received information from a source apparently high up within the Soviet government giving them exactly what they were wanting regarding recent Soviet naval exercises. This, however, prompts some suspicions on the part of George Smiley, who notes that while the intelligence is invaluable if the source is true, "its topicality is suspect"; the very fact that it's everything they wanted can't be trusted. Soon after, he's shoved out of the service as a fall guy for a major intelligence screw up. But his suspicions are absolutely on the ball; the Soviets are using it as bait to lure the British in in order to give their own highly-placed mole a perfect opportunity to funnel valuable British and American intelligence to Moscow.
• In Tomorrow Never Dies, the main villain's tech-savvy subordinate says this about the fabricated backstory James Bond provided to infiltrate their organisation.
  Henry Gupta: Bond's got a perfect record. He's crossed ever T, dotted every I...
  Elliot Carver: Which means?
  Henry Gupta: Government agent. I call it Gupta's Law of Creative Anomalies; if something looks too good to be true, it usually is.

Literature

• Angels of Music: In "The Case of Mrs Norton", Irene Norton née Adler hires the Angels to investigate her husband Godfrey, having become convinced that someone as seemingly upright and noble as him must be hiding some kind of dark secret. In a subversion, it turns out he doesn't have any dark secrets, and is genuinely as good as he appears; Irene's constitutionally better suited to the life of danger she lived before she married him, and is having trouble settling down and unconsciously looking for an excuse.
• The Hercule Poirot short story The Adventure of the Cheap Flat has a Mr. and Mrs. Robinson who is able to rent a flat for £80 a year, when the real rent is £350 per year. This arouses Poirot's interest and he decides to investigate. Turns out that two spies were renting the flat under the fake name Robinson and they rented it out to the Robinsons in the hope that the innocent couple would be killed in their place by a mafia hitman sent after the spies.
• Ravnica Cycle: In Dissension, a Simic Combine representative meets with the Golgari Swarm's guildmaster, Jarad, to try to sell him on cytoplastic enhancements for the Swarm. Not only is the representative going to give him the first shipment of cytoplasts for free, but he's effectively going to pay Jarad millions of zinos to take them. Jarad finds the whole deal incredibly suspicious, especially since the representative keeps raising the amount of money being offered, and eventually he gets fed up and throws the rep out. His suspicions are later proven correct when the Simic Combine's guildmaster initiates Project Kraj, making every cytoplast in the city tear itself off its host and join together to form a giant Blob Monster.
• One of the first lessons a trapper learns in Sixth of the Dusk is that nothing comes easy on the islands. If something seems easy, it's a trap. The same goes for the technology "left behind" by the Ones Above, which turns out to be an elaborate Batman Gambit.
• In Words of Radiance, Adolin is unsurprised and completely willing to believe Kaladin's claim that Amaram betrayed him and murdered his friends, noting that Amaram's completely flawless reputation suggests to him someone who's putting a lot of effort into looking good. This is at a time when his father's genuinely well meaning efforts are destroying his reputation.

Live-Action TV

• In The A-Team episode "The Road to Hope", Hannibal suspects from the start that something is up with their latest client, because she's offering them $300,000 to come to her cushy house and her fancy yacht and update her security. Face doesn't want to believe him, but it turns out Hannibal was right.
• In Castle's first episode, Richard Castle is rather bothered by how quickly and neatly everything on his first case falls into place, though the cops don't see anything wrong with this. It turns out he's right, and the man they've arrested is a patsy.
• Community: In the episode "Remedial Chaos Theory", Jeff says he can't stay long for Troy and Abed's housewarming party because he has an invitation to an awesome new club.
  Jeff: Look at this place. It's like it was designed for me.
  Abed: It was. I made that in Photoshop and mailed it to you a month ago so you'd keep tonight open on your calendar.
  Jeff: There's no such thing as Single-Malt-Platinum-Boobs-And-Billards Club?! (realizes) Oh. I guess I never said it out loud.
• In episode 3 of season 1 of Death in Paradise all of the evidence points to one person. Naturally, Richard feels it's all too neat.
• In the Enemy at the Door episode "The Polish Affaire", a man and woman who were lovers in the Balkans before the war are reunited when he escapes from a forced labor camp and hides out in her garden. It turns out that his choice of hiding place owes nothing to luck, nor even the fact that he was transferred to a labor camp so near her; the escape was stage-managed from the beginning, and not for either of their benefit.
• Invoked in Family Matters when Laura tries to make money selling some shampoo from a dealer. When she and the other women using it lose their hair, Laura calls the number only to find it's been disconnected. Cop father Carl breaks it to her the whole thing was a scam and they've already moved to another city to pull the same con. He cites the trope verbatim in Laura too eager for a "dream job" to look at the reality.
• On First Wave, Cade is taken to a facility where he's told the government has been onto the alien Gua for some time and want his help fighting them off. Cade is naturally suspicious but coming around when he reunites with his uncle and is saved from a Gua agent. He's put in a press conference revealing the alien threat and how Earth can fight back. As the agents gush on how Cade is now a hero, Cade excuses himself then runs to escape the facility. Reaching the nearest city, Cade sees there's nothing in the news about an alien threat and confirms this was a massive "test" by the Gua. When ally Crazy Eddie asks how Cade figured it out, Cade admits he was tempted but realized "it was too damn perfect."
• Game of Thrones: When Hot Pie regales Arya of the demise of the Boltons at the hands of an army led by Jon Snow, her reaction is a mix of shock and disbelief, and her immediate response is "you're lying." In light of what Ayra's been through, her brother heroically marching south to avenge their family, destroying the Boltons and being crowned King in the North, it would all would sound Too Good To Be True.
• In the season 1 finale of Goosebumps (2023), the twisted Kanduu tries to tempt the kids into being turned into puppets as part of his big sacrifice plans by tempting them with seemingly wonderful moments. Isaiah is offered a free scholarship, Margot finds her separated parents are getting back together and James' jock crush asks him to the prom. Amusingly, Kanduu never even gets to make such an offer to Isabella as the moment her mother says "nice to see you," Isabella knows something is off and is able to warn the others in time. Sadly, Lucas completely falls for the illusion that his long-dead father is popping up alive again and ends up trapped with the gang having to save him and the rest of the town.
• In Married... with Children, any time a Bundy acknowledges a streak of good fortune, bad luck will ensue with disastrous results.
• Sex/Life: When Billie first met Cooper, she was taken aback by how nice, perfect, clean-cut, and sweet he was to her. In her own words, she kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, and reveal something bad underneath. But it never happened, much to her surprise.
• Star Trek: The Original Series: In "The Cage", the crew of Enterprise discover the survivors of another Starfleet vessel, heroically surviving in Robinsonade-style, yet all in perfect health. Then their captain is Lured into a Trap and these survivors all vanish into thin air, as they are a telepathic illusion created by the inhabitants of the planet as The Bait.
  Boyce: It was a perfect illusion. They had us seeing just what we wanted to see, human beings who'd survived with dignity and bravery, everything entirely logical, right down to the building of the camp, the tattered clothing, everything.
• In the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Hope and Fear", our heroes meet an alien Omniglot who helps them decode a message they received from Starfleet several episodes earlier, and it directs them to a new starship with a quantum slipstream drive that can get them across the galaxy in three months. Janeway starts to get a Gut Feeling that this is just too perfect—and she's right. The alien wants to use the ship to capture the crew and feed them to the Borg.
  • In "Bliss", Seven returns from a mission to find the crew excited at a wormhole that can take them right to Earth. Seven checks the logs where Janeway's initial doubts are replaced by whole-hearted acceptance. She then sees how the crew are getting messages via the wormhole from Starfleet which include such items as Janeway's ex-fiancee being single, Chakotay and the Maquis getting pardons, Neelix made an ambassador and others offered terrific jobs. It turns out the "wormhole" is a massive alien creature sending out telepathic signals to lure ships into itself to feast upon.
    • The crew are rendered comatose except for Seven and Naomi Wildman. They meet Quatai, who's been hunting the creature since it feasted on hundreds of his people (including his own family) decades earlier. He relates how the creature can still get him such as tricking Quatai into thinking he was about to deliver a bomb to its brain rather than flying into his stomach. It looks like the ship is escaping but the Doctor (immune to the monster's powers) warns them it's just an illusion so they can truly escape. Upon awakening, the crew has to adjust to how the "messages from Earth" were all part of the illusion.
• In "Dead Stop" from Star Trek: Enterprise, T'Pol notices Captain Archer is visibly troubled about the mysterious repair station they've found which is able and willing to fix every bit of the extensive damage to their ship (and the injuries to its crew) in exchange for the amazingly low price of just 200 liters of warp plasma. His instincts are sound, as it turns out there's a "hidden fee" the station also tries to extract from them.
• In Stargate SG-1, Jack O'Neill notes this about the Aschen, a highly advanced race that basically solves all Earth's problems single handedly. Needless to say, he's right; in one possible future, the Aschen have defeated the Goa'uld, but they're also sterilising Earth's population with the intention of turning the survivors into little more than their slaves, forcing SG-1 to hit the Reset Button and send a message back to their past selves to prevent them making the alliance with the Aschen in the first place.
• On Touched by an Angel, Monica is trying to stop fallen angel Kathleen from tempting a good man into an evil act. Both confront him in their true forms with the man asking God to help him see which one is the devil.
  Kathleen: Come on, baby, you can trust me! You said it yourself, I'm...
  Bob: Too good to be true.
• The Twilight Zone (1959): In "Printer's Devil", Douglas Winter, the editor of the failing newspaper The Dansburg Courier, hires a new star reporter and linotype operator Mr. Smith, who manages to turn the paper's fortunes around in two weeks. It turns out that Mr. Smith is the Devil who wants his immortal soul.

Video Games

• Batman: Arkham City: After saving Vicki Vale from Joker's thugs, Alfred contacts Batman with some good news in that Lucius Fox has found and identified the cure to his current affliction and gives him the coordinates to find and use it. When Batman knocks out the thugs nearby the pod-container, he uses it and it might have worked... only to fall unconscious moments later. Turns out it was a trap set by the Mad Hatter AKA Jervis Tetch, a man with a MAJOR penchant for both mind-controlling hat-wear and the Alice in Wonderland fairy tale. Batman gets out of the miniature mess by literally fighting his way out of the surreal clock-falling landscape with enough hits to Mad Hatter, concluding with crushing his main mind-control hat underfoot and then delivering a knock-out punch that ensures the Mad Hatter stays down for good.
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: Benirus Manor is a spacious estate in a good area of town, but is on sale for a pittance. If you buy it, the seller flees the city before you find out about its ghost problem.
• In Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator, taking up advertisement deals can fall under this. You get a whole load of money for accepting them, What Could Possibly Go Wrong? They may interrupt your work, delaying your ability to complete your shift and present a prime opportunity for an animatronic to attack while your systems are down.
• At the beginning of the Nancy Drew game Secret of the Scarlet Hand, Nancy asks how the Beech Hill Museum was able to acquire a priceless Mayan artifact. The curator waves it off, saying that art dealer Taylor Sinclair is "a wizard when it comes to these deals." Unbeknownst to the museum, Taylor's "wizardry" involves forging provenance documents and outright stealing those priceless artifacts.
• In Persona 5, this is the reason the Traitor gets found out; their story is lining up with the goals of the Phantom Thieves, and offering them a way out of an otherwise hopeless situation. Morgana confides in Joker that everything seemed to line up a little too conveniently. Goro Akechi offers to join the Phantom Thieves and help them escape the authorities if they agree to disband after one last heist. Given that Akechi was hellbent on bringing the Thieves to justice in the months before, the Thieves are suspicious of his intentions, but go with his plan anyway since they don't have any other options. However, Morgana notes that Akechi accidentally revealed himself as being able to hear Morgana speak normally (something only people who have been to the Metaverse can do) way before Akechi claimed he first went. These suspicions are proven right when Akechi outs himself as The Heavy.
• Total War: Warhammer II: An event that occurs when a Skaven lord has high loyalty offers options for rewarding him, but also the option to torture said lord because there is no way a Skaven could be so loyal, he must be up to something!

Web Comics

• In The Order of the Stick, this is how Elan realizes that they are in a Lotus-Eater Machine. Specifically, he notes that Haley and Roy's happy endings are good and mostly realistic, his just involve a bunch of childish dreams that could never work out in the real world—in particular, his parents^note a Lawful Evil tyrant and a Chaotic Good commoner remarrying and Nale dropping his vendettas against them. Admitting to himself that this will never happen breaks them out of the illusion.
  • When Nale himself gets caught by the same Lotus-Eater Machine, what breaks him out is the realization that he's been monologuing at the heroes for hours and they haven't taken advantage of it (as pictured above).

Western Animation

• Played With in the American Dad! episode "The Vacation Goo". Francine finds out that every family vacation was just a simulation Stan created, and she demands that he take the family on a real vacation. He actually does take the family on a cruise ship, but Francine becomes convinced it's fake after seeing several unlikely sights, including Stan and Hayley getting along, Steve hooking up with an attractive woman, and Roger being on the ship (he wasn't invited, but one of his personas got a job there). Some of these are real, though some are just them trying to act cheerful to make her happy.
• Amphibia: The fantasy illusion The Core created in her own mindscape crumbles when Marcy realizes that the fake Anne and Sasha would mindlessly join her for her RPG activities, which is something Marcy acknowledges they never do.
• In the Archie's Weird Mysteries episode "Reggie or Not", Reggie states this after Veronica was ripped off for a designer dress at a low cost. This also turns out to be this episode's Aesop.
  Reggie: Wake up and smell the rip off, Ronnie. If something sounds too good to be true, it is!
• In the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Chemistry", Bruce Wayne (and a lot of Gotham's wealthy elite) have apparently found their perfect soulmates. Bruce realizes almost too late that these ideal mates everyone has on the ship, including his, are just far too perfect in every way to be real. As Susan herself points out when he tells her that he should have realized a whirlwind romance like theirs was just too easy, "Love isn't supposed to be easy. Even I know that, and I'm a vegetable!"
• Captain Planet and the Planeteers: In "Domes of Doom", a man named Baron Giftus talks about the importance of the world's forests and announces that he has been arranging for them to be put under his protection. Wheeler wonders aloud what Giftus plans to get from the arrangement when the team sees the announcement on the television. Gi and Ma-Ti think he's just being suspicious, but it turns out that Baron Giftus is an alias used by Looten Plunder in the latest of his schemes.
• Kid Cosmic: After the Season 2 finale, the Local Heroes find themselves as agents of the Planet Protection Group, working to stop supervillains from taking over the city with the Cosmic Stones scattered across the world. Jo and Papa G manage to pick up that the whole situation seems too idealized, and eventually find out that it is: When the Local Heroes were thrown into a portal by Fantos, he threw them into a Lotus-Eater Machine world where they won the fight against him and Erodius. On the fake Earth, Kid gets to live out all his fantasies where he fights supervillains from his comics, meets his favorite band and reunites with his dead parents.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "Leap of Faith", Applejack says that line after her grandmother buys Film and Flam's tonic.
  Applejack: When somepony's says something's too good to be true, it usually is.
• The Owl House: "Edge of the World" starts with King, Eda, Luz, and Hooty welcoming King's father and his two younger siblings to the Owl House. King eventually realizes it's a dream because it's Too Good To Be True.
• Phineas and Ferb: In "Phineas and Ferb Get Busted!" this is how Candace finds out that the events of the episode are All Just a Dream — she realizes that things are getting too good to be true when Jeremy proposes to her.
• In the Rick and Morty episode "A Rick in King Mortur’s Mort", Morty is recruited into the Order of the Sun and he figures there has to be a catch, and starts questioning it; the Knights tell him that they are "immortal" in the sense that they can't be killed, but they can die whenever they please, and they're not forced to stay on the Sun forever and can come and go as they like. Morty seems satisfied by the answers, but at his induction ceremony, finds out that there is indeed a catch: Knights are required to cut off their penises to join The Order.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: In "Cupid's Errant Arrow", Mariner believes this of Barbara. She's beautiful, smart, in Starfleet, and a Lieutenant, so the fact that she's interested in Boimler means that surely something must be amiss. She's right, but not for the reason that she thinks. In turn, Barbara was thinking this of Mariner for largely the reasons, as she also finds Mariner's persona as an accomplished, devil-may-care cool space adventurer to be too prefect to be true.
• Steven Universe: In "Room for Ruby", Steven couldn't see Navy wanting to join the Crystal Gems and live on Earth after their past encounters, but it was Played for Laughs. Lapis doubted that Navy could immediately adjust to life on Earth with no problems, especially when Lapis still getting used to Earth is a major theme of the story. Both Steven and Lapis are shown to be right. Navy's betrayal wasn't a Foregone Conclusion.

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