Schmuck Bait / Comic Books

• Superman:
  • In Action Comics #259, Superboy finds a cage with a big sign that says "Luthor Trap to Catch Superboy" and one over the door that says "Enter here, please." Thinking nobody would build such an obvious trap, Superboy enters out of curiosity, and finds out the bars are Kryptonite.
    Superboy: Now I've seen everything! Nobody would deliberately put me on guard, by putting a sign like that on a real trap!
    Narration: Curiously... Well, let's face it... Stupidly, the Boy of Steel enters the trap!
    Superboy: It's... Kryptonite-lined! I—I'm p-passing out...
    Lex Luthor: I captured Superboy through his sheer dumbness!
  • In DC Comics Presents, Ambush Bug is loose in the 30th Century and running amok, to the consternation of Superman and the Legion of Substitute Heroes. He'd be there still if he hadn't seen a room with a "Do Not Enter" sign — inside of which was a device with a sign pointing at its activation button: "Do Not Push". That's how Ambush Bug sent himself to the Phantom Zone.
    Polar Boy: Amazing! The only two signs in the place in 20th-Century English, and he still fell for it!
    Superman: Generally, Polar Boy, lunatics aren't your smartest criminals.
  • In World's Finest (1941) #72, a gang of criminals use special weapons to shoot and rob an armored car. When they try to steal another armored car, they find Superman inside and realize too late that it was a trap.
• Supergirl:
  • In the Escape from the Phantom Zone crossover, Supergirl asks helps Batgirl to rescue a Kryptonian telepath who has been sending her distress calls. When Batgirl points out that "telepathic message from unfairly imprisoned psychic" has "trap" written all over it, Supergirl argues she cannot run the risk that this specific distress call is not legitimate. Unfortunately, Batgirl's suspicions are proved right, and the "imprisoned psychic" attacks both heroines when they meet her.
    Supergirl: There is a girl there. A prisoner. Test subject. She needs our help.
    Batgirl: And how'd you find out about her?
    Supergirl: Long-distance telepathic transmission. Only I can hear her.
    Batgirl: Ah, the old incarcerated psychic trick. If I had a nickel for every time—
  • The Supergirl-Batgirl Plot: When Mr. Mxyzptlk declares he has won their bet and demands the prize money, Batmite writes a check and hands it over to Mxy, saying he has signed it with his real name. Puzzled, Mxyzptlk reads "Klt Pzy Xm"...and he realizes what he has been tricked into saying his name backwards right before being forcefully and automatically returned to his own dimension.
    • Honestly, Schmuckbaiting is how someone usually gets Mxy to say his name backwards.
  • The Death of Luthor: Supergirl is about to catch Luthor and his gang when a baby cart suddenly and conveniently slips out of one woman's grasp and starts rolling down the street. Kara flies to save it and realizes too late that it was a trap. Both the "woman" pushing the cart, and the endangered "baby" were Luthor's minions in disguise, the latter of which hurls one Kryptonite rock at Kara when she gets close enough.
• The Punisher wears the skull on his chest (over his body armor) so they don't shoot the one in his head.
• Batman:
  • The Batmobile has an unlabeled large bright shiny red button in easy reach of the driver's side. When pressed, it floods the car with sleeping gas, the driver's side first and foremost. Why? In case the Joker ever steals it. Because The Joker would never be able to resist pushing an unlabeled large bright shiny red button just to see what happens.
  • In Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, the bright yellow logo on Batman's chest is revealed to be bait, as he deliberately included this target in his costume to bait Mooks into shooting at his well-armored chest, not his head.
• Red Hood and the Outlaws: A long, empty corridor that leads to the McGuffin and gives your War Trained Princess the creeps? Seems fine.
• Lampshaded by Rainbow Dash in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW), assured that the Queen's plan is just a trap for the Mane Six.
• Employed in a Felix the Cat comic where he figures out that the person who just stole a set of jewelry is a compulsive reader. So he has the police set up upside-down signs around the city and waits for someone to do a handstand to read the sign and have the jewelry fall out of their pockets.
• Ultra Comics #1. Its cover has the eponymous Ultra warning the reader that only they can save the universe and themselves by not reading this comic. Earth-20's Atom didn't heed the warning in Society of Super-Heroes: Conquerors from the Counter-World #1. Will you?
• In Sonic Universe, Silver, Jack the Metal and Larry the Lynx are going through a dungeon especially designed to be impassable to anybody who doesn't have Chaos Powers. They come across a long corridor with the walls, ceiling and floor covered in holes.
  Jack: I sense a trap.
  • One of the "Off-Panels" has a less-than-ingenious attempt by Silver to find his supposed traitor: Traitor Chow, in an obvious rope-snare. Sonic is seen slapping his head at this one.
• In White Sand, Kenton's looking for the last sphere to finish his Fetch Quest exam when he spots it in the centre of a perfectly round and flat plaza of quicksand - in the middle of of mountains. He goes for it, wondering only for a moment what kind of winds would create such place... and of course it turns out to be not a geological feature but a nest.
• In Red Sonja: The Art of Blood and Fire Gribaldi announces his first appetizer course to Emperor Samala: pate with Khitaian mushrooms. Minutes later Gribaldi mentions that as any true gourmand knows, Khitaian mushrooms are deadly poisonous.
• Black Science: Peterson’s dimensionaut team returns from a successful foray with a bunch of cutesy fuzzballs. One has a big red button on its head that practically screams “press me!”. Someone presses it. Bad things happen.

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