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Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy: After making a painful journey up the mountains, the stacks of furniture, the church walls, and mysteriously floating spheres, you make it to a bucket you have to swing over, but further to the left, there's a snake and a sign that says "DO NOT RIDE SNAKE". Whatever you do, obey what the sign says, unless you want to take an express lane to the very beginning of the game.
God of War:
- God of War II: Hold R1 to drain your godly power into one easily-stolen sword. Since Zeus is the one who tells you to do this, only the most unsavvy players would think this will end well. But Thou Must!...
- In God of War (PS4), Kratos can use the branches of Yggdrasil to fast-travel. He is repeatedly warned that jumping off the branches will kill him, but there is nothing stopping the player from doing it. That being said, there's a hidden area near Jötunheim's portal that requires you to jump off the branch while wearing a special protective rune.
  Brok: And whatever do you, never, never, EVER, never, ever, ever, ever, ever throw yourself over the edge of the path... lest you want death.
Gold Box:
- While exploring a tower in Curse of the Azure Bonds, you have the option of picking up a piece of parchment on avoiding the tower's traps. Tip number one: Don't read Explosive Runes.
- Pool of Radiance has one when fighting the final boss of the game series, a powerful demon. When you win out over his first wave of attackers, he tries to tempt you with the power of the stone he has and runs a command word by too quickly to read. If you used tricks like pausing the computer at the right time to read the code and input it, you complete the demon's plan, causing Elminster to rise up from the pool, crying out in horror, before swiftly dying, along with the entire party.
- Secret of the Silver Blades has a room in the Dreadlord's lair with a sign: "Certain death lies behind this door. This does not lead to the Dreadlord." If you enter the room, there is a very difficult fight (with the same sort of monsters you've been encountering already, but more of them), which is introduced by a spectre saying "I'm very sorry, but you were warned." The room contains no treasure and no Dreadlord.
Golden Sun:
- The game makes stupidity the only option. You can find a pillar of the sort you are usually knocking down with Force deep in the Altin Mines, next to a sign saying "Do not strike the wall! Rocks may fall!" You have to trigger a rockslide here to continue in the game. This leads to two potential Funny Moments:
  - If you do not have the Force Psynergy to knock over the pillar, Garet will pop out, get pissed off at the dead end, and kick it down, causing the rockslide.
  - Whether you or Garet cause the rockslide, it results in Isaac having to make an Indy Escape from a giant rolling boulder (which knocks a hole in the floor of the mines, enabling you to continue further down).
Grand Theft Auto:
- Grand Theft Auto IV:
  - Go to www.littlelacysurprisepageant.com on the in-game Internet and COOL THINGS happen! ^note
  - If you choose to take the Deal route at the end of the game. Sure, nothing will go wrong with working with Dimitri one last time for a huge payday, will it? Not that the other route is much better, mind you, but choosing to Deal results in a full-on Downer Ending due to your greed, while Revenge still ends up being quite a downer, but not nearly as much.
- Grand Theft Auto V:
  - When playing the online component, you're told that holding down the chat key while singing into the microphone will net you some easy RPs when your character takes a shower. And it does — a measily 50 RP. You know what else it does? It broadcasts your singing to the entire session. How bad the aftermath will be depends on whether you're on a completely public session, a friends-only or crew-only session, or playing solo, and how good your singing actually is.
  - In the story mode mission "Deep Inside", after accidentally kidnapping a woman while trying to recover one of Devon's cars, Franklin spots a red button inside the vehicle and wonders what it does. Pressing it causes the woman to be ejected out of the car in absolutely hysterical fashion.
Guild Wars has several treasure chests, heaps of gold, and suspicious wall panels scattered throughout the Nightfall lands labelled "Do not touch". When you touch them, you will get a precious item and gold, but several Djinns will spawn and try to kill you.

In Hacknet, the CCCHacksquad server is this. Its only purpose is to teach the player what to do if a trace completes. It's probably based off the "honeypot server" trap used to catch attempted hackers (further supported by the password being "honeypot" and the beehive desktop background in its GUI file), making it video game schmuck bait that imitates real-life schmuck bait.
Half-Life:
- Half-Life:
  - Early on, after the resonance cascade, you reach an elevator with a large warning sign next to it — "In Case Of Fire Do Not Use Elevators" — should you press the button, an elevator full of scientists will fall screaming to their doom. (The developer who thought this up said that it worked both as a game element and as a message to other developers — "Enough with the damn button puzzles already.") The elevator still falls even if you don't press the button. Though most people probably do anyway.
  - After killing the assassins, a room opens up revealing a first-aid station. Naturally, the player will go for it straight away to heal up, but get ambushed by some soldiers and have all their weapons taken away. Even if you know about this in advance, you can't avoid it.
- Half-Life 2 and its expansions tend to leave small piles of ammo, health, and power apparently in the open on the opposite end of seemingly empty rooms or vents, except when you go to get them, the floor will collapse or something and leave you suddenly surrounded by headcrabs or somesuch. The first time, you can probably be forgiven for falling for it, but afterwards not so much, especially since you can grab the items safely from a distance with your gravity gun. In time, you come to realize that the corpses you tend to find nearby are from the many people that sacrificed themselves setting those caches, and the things that killed them are likely expecting your arrival, too.
The Harvest Moon games have this in the form of Golden Lumber. It's an indestructible building material, but in most games, it can only be used as fencing. It's also expensive (one piece usually costs 100,000G. By comparison, one stone piece costs 100G and you can make them yourself). In many of the older games, golden lumber is taken by your neighbors as showing off your wealth, so your friendship levels will drop, until you sell the pieces you have off. The only game where the stuff is actually useful is in HM DS/DS Cute, where you can make virtually indestructible buildings (and that's only really feasible late into the game or using the 1 Billion Gold glitch).
It is very, very obvious that something is not right with Dr. Shuu Iwamine in Hatoful Boyfriend. It is so obvious that something is wrong about him that many players will decide that his weird behaviour being a Red Herring is too obvious, and that his route is a double-bluff. They're right. Shuu has no good ending. Unfortunately, you need one of his bad endings to get the true ending, and both of them if you want the epilogue.
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft uses this with Secrets. Sometimes, though, it combines this with Trap Is the Only Option, as there is almost no way to make progress towards victory without tripping that one Secret, at which point the objective becomes minimizing the impact of triggering it. Knowing what Secrets are available, how each possible Secret can trigger, and under what context a possible Secret could be used is vital to playing around them.

In Ikachan, there's a chamber full of fish that comes with a sign "Curiosity killed the cat". Trying to enter this chamber will shut the entrance, and should you come without the ability to thrust sideways, you will be left to die on a(n in)conveniently placed spike-bed.
The Impossible Quiz, question 35. "Pressing this button will result in a game over." It is not lying.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: Sure, you can punch Colonel Vogel or even Adolf Hitler while a soldier has a machine gun pointed at you. No points for guessing what happens next (although breaking Hitler's nose does add 10 points to your losing score).
INFRA: In the first level of Chapter 3, the map, a sign, and several documents warn personnel to keep out of the triple-locked corridor B2. Those who dare to solve the puzzle to unlock it will be treated to a (fortunately non-fatal) Jump Scare by Mörkö.
I Wanna Be the Guy:
- There's a screen that replicates the "It's dangerous to go alone! Take this..." cave from The Legend of Zelda. Touching the sword kills you. And mocks you for jumping into a sword.
- "This is the safest room in the game, only Q can kill you."

In Jables's Adventure, you encounter a mermaid who'd rather not talk to you, and keeps offering you useless things to make you go away. Eventually, she says, "Listen, if I tell you a secret, will you leave me alone? ...If you pester the mermaid too much, you're gonna have a bad time." If you talk to her again, she says "I warned you", and kills you instantly.
Jardinains! and its sequel Jardinains 2! have a power-up that looks like a prohibition sign. In the manual of 2!, its name is revealed to be "Very, Very Bad". The description is "Do not get this powerup. Do not get this powerup" (emphasis original). If you catch it anyway, you'll lose all the ball and paddle powerups you had and have to deal with a tiny paddle and a really fast ball for the rest of the level or until you lose a life. Granted, sometimes you have to catch the powerup to avoid losing the ball, and sometimes you don't have time to react and move your paddle out of the way, but most of the time, it's Schmuck Bait.
Jinsei Owata no Daibouken, being a Platform Hell game, has numerous examples:
- One hallway has a path forking downwards with a sign reading "天国"^translationHeaven. This leads to an inescapable trap with every surface covered in Spikes of Doom except for another sign reading "針天国"^translationSpike Heaven.
- Another room has no enemies, just a flashing sign saying (in English): "You are Lucky Player! Please click here". If you click on it, you immediately explode and the sign's message changes to "Your life is end".

In Karoshi 2, there's a level where a message says "You will quit if you press 'q'." Most people will try, though.
Kid Icarus: Uprising:
- Chapter 2 presents a section of its ground-based level that has a treasure chest, just sitting out there in the open, waiting to be plundered. Not. That chest's a trap, and Magnus even tells Pit how the facet of an actual treasure chest with actual treasure presented in plain sight is outright ludicrous. And in case you think it'll still give you treasure, all it gives you is a heart. Have fun trying to make that worthwhile while facing a mob of two dozen enemies.
- In Chapter 5, during the invisible path section, there's an easy-to-reach chest. Want its treasure? Sure... if you don't mind an Orne suddenly materializing out of nowhere when you try to approach it. Mind you, Ornes are lethal on contact.
Killer Frequency: In order to save Maurice, who's trapped in his office building with the Whistling Man, Forrest and Peggy instructs him to place a decoy radio in the Archive Room. Ideally, Maurice will be given enough time to hide away, before Forrest pretends to sound like Maurice over the radio, attracting and trapping the serial killer inside the one-way room. However, the game can trick the player into exposing Maurice too early. After Maurice sets the radio, a rare timed dialogue box with options appears. Clicking on any of them, instead of letting the time pass, will be too soon and Maurice will be killed. Just the set up the impulse, the game had an earlier timed dialogue box for Forrest to urgently remind Maurice to turn down the radio's volume, or else Maurice blows his cover and gets killed.
Kindergarten: If you're not Nugget's friend and talk to him during recess, he'll try to convince you to enter the Nugget Cave, a very deep hole he dug in the sandpit. If you say yes, your character jumps into the pit and falls to his death.
- The sequel has one when you get sent to detention. At the start of detention, Dr. Danner tells you not to talk and then immediately asks if you understand. If you respond that you do, he shoots you for speaking.
Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix: The Absent Silhouettes are easy to access from early on, and often appear right in front of you while you complete each world's story (in fact, Sora and Co. point out Zexion's when they pass it in The Underworld, though you can't do anything with it yet). Examining them will usually lead to an unprepared player getting murdered.
In King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow, the Genie attempts to get you to kill yourself through a succession of schmuck baits.
Knights of the Old Republic:
- You are tasked with delivering a box to a Hutt and warned not to open it, or something very bad will happen. You have a choice as to whether or not to open it. If you do, your consciousness is transmitted to a Phantom Zone-like prison dimension. The inmate there challenges you to a contest of riddles, the winner of which will get to return to the real world and inhabit your now-mindless body, and the loser of which will be stuck in the prison dimension indefinitely. Even if you win and return to your body, you don't get any rewards. Unless you like riddles, it's best not to open the box.
- At one point, you visit a Sand People encampment. You're warned not to take anything from their camp without permission. If you do, every one of them turns hostile and attacks you. And when they're reiterating their oral history, you're warned not to question any of it; if you do, they attack you. You're told that sand people must never remove their all-covering garments for what amounts to religious reasons. If you admit you killed a sand person and stole their clothes, they attack you. And so on.
- There is also a mild example in Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. When you go to Korriban and start exploring the Valley of Sith Lords, Kreia will contact you and mention that you shouldn't disturb the corpses. If you decide to loot them anyway, enemies spawn and attack you and Kreia chastises you.
- Star Wars: The Old Republic:
  - On Alderaan, a house of assassins has a "Guest Wing" full of traps. One of these is a chest, sitting on a pedestal in the middle of the room; it's even labeled "Conspicuous Security Chest". Lying in front of it is the body of a previous Schmuck, done in by a half-dozen poison darts. Guess what happens if you open the chest?
  - A player is exploring Voss, minding their own business when... hey, what's this "Forbidden Knowledge" tablet? Looks like a lore object, let's read it — say hello to the two-part World Boss!
Knytt Stories:
- There's a fan level called Don't Eat the Mushroom, with the laughable plot of Juni traveling three screens to deliver a package to a neighbor, encountering a mushroom on the way. If you actually decide to listen to the title and ignore the mushroom, you can deliver the package, thus ending the game in less than a minute, as discovered by ProtonJon on his first try. If you touch the mushroom, you drop into a psychedelic wonderland upon entering the next screen, and, upon completing the acid trip, you can either deliver the package or return home, or, alternately, go jump in the ocean.
  ProtonJon: Does doing drugs actually do this? I— I'm gonna need to check this, 'cause if I took a hit of acid and suddenly saw the Burger King on fire singing "What is Love", I'd be amazed.
- There is also the level Do Not Pick Up The Key, in which everything tells you not to pick up the key at the end. NPCs, signs, hieroglyphs, computer screens, snowmen, everything. There are dozens of message boxes throughout the level telling you not to pick it up. What happens if you pick it up? First of all, the bridge leading to the Golden Ending will disappear if you try to cross it. Below it is a teleporter with a rather ominous custom effect. If you step into that teleporter, a cutscene appears with the words "YOU LOSER!" on a red background, surrounded by a wall of text calling you out for picking up the key you were explicitly told not to pick up. As a punishment, the game then sends you to the "Room of Doom", a rather difficult challenge area with non-functioning levers placed there to tease you.

La-Mulana:
- In the first game, one of the stone tablets says not to read the glyph again (which triggers more enemy spawns, if the warning is ignored), one of them warns not to use weapons in a certain location (or else lighting strikes the player), and so on. The Chamber of Extinction's Disconnected Side Area has a coin sitting out in the open at the end of a narrow side passage. It's a trap, since you don't get coins in this game except by breaking pots (and the occasional wall) or killing enemies. The remake changes the coin to an Ankh, which should be just as big a warning. There's also an Ankh Jewel sitting out in the open in the Twin Labyrinths and a Sacred Orb in the Inferno Cavern. Getting either is never that easy.
- La-Mulana 2 has the Cursed Tablet. There's a warning sign before it that says not to read it twice or you will be cursed, it's surrounded by a destructible barrier, reading it once will cause the tablet to inform you of the curse, and your NPC friend to send you an e-mail saying not to read it again. Reading the cursed tablet twice permanently activates hard mode for the rest of the game.
In Layers of Fear, there's a moment where an ominous message warns you not to look behind you and you hear the sound of a woman sobbing. If you ignore it and turn around anyway, you'll get a Jump Scare.
Left 4 Dead:
- If you see the Witch and manage not to instantly startle her, and everyone else tells you not to shoot her... listen. Particularly annoying is in L4D2, where you get an achievement for not startling any of the 10-20 Witches in the sugar mill of the Hard Rain campaign. It's not certain what is worst; the tension and difficulty of the actual task, the constant reminders about not shooting the Witches from the AI, or the AI taking the Schmuck Bait themselves and shooting a Witch that could easily have been avoided and forcing the rest of the group to save them.
- Left 4 Dead 2:
  - The game has jukeboxes at some places, with which you can put on music for use when zombie killing. The problem is, said music also attracts zombie hordes. A variation of this exists in "The Passing" DLC, in which there is a stereo at a wedding... which causes the witch that always spawns there to get spooked and immediately attack the survivor that activated it, in addition to a horde being summoned.
  - The "Dead Air" campaign takes place in an airport. In one part of that airport is a metal detector that you can walk through in plain sight. Walking through it will cause an alarm, alerting a TRUCKLOAD of Infected. It becomes a But Thou Must! in the sequel due to changes in the map that force you to walk through the detector.
The Legend of Zelda:
- In the original NES game, there are several caves where you can choose between a red potion or a Heart Container. A red potion can be bought for a paltry 68 rupees, heart containers cannot. There is no reason to choose the red potion over a Heart Container. Interestingly, some 30 years later the world record speedrun route would in fact take one of the potions. Actually completing the medicine sidequest takes too much time, but having two full health refills is far more valuable in level 9 than one more heart, as it allows several damage boosts and more aggressive play against both the Patras and Ganon himself.
- In A Link to the Past, a sign says not to throw anything into a nearby circle of stones. This game allows you to pick up and throw signs. The first time you do this, you actually get rewarded for it; in fact, you need the item you get to complete the game. Do it again, though, and the creature that lives in the circle of stones throws an active bomb at you.
- Rather than the tradition click-and-buy shop hubs, the shops in Link's Awakening have you pick up the item and bring it to the cash register to pay for it. If you try to shoplift, the shopkeeper will yell at you, and you won't be able to leave without putting it back or paying. However, some fancy maneuvering makes it possible to slip past his line of sight and get it for free. If you do this, all NPCs will call you "THIEF" instead of your chosen name, and the shopkeeper will kill you if you ever go back in ^note.
- In the German version of Ocarina of Time, a hidden Gossip Stone behind the Deku Tree says (in German): "They say something mysterious will happen if you press the reset button while playing." Of course, nothing happens besides your progress being lost.
- In Majora's Mask, the fight with Goht only happens because you decided to shoot a Fire Arrow at the giant mechanical demon entombed in a block of ice. As usual, to continue with the game, you have to release the monster, and then kill it.
- Twilight Princess:
  - The miniboss of Arbiter's Grounds, Death Sword. It's a honking great big sword, strapped to the ground with ropes covered in prayer strips. It practically screams, "Sealed Demon: Do Not Touch". But of course, you have to go and cut the ropes.
  - In the bomb shop, Barnes has signs plastered everywhere warning customers that lit lanterns are forbidden. If you light your lantern, Barnes panics, drops his eye protectors... and harmlessly dumps water on you to extinguish the lantern.
- Skyward Sword:
  - The game lampshades this via a treasure chest that appears while helping Batreaux. Batreaux will warn you, desperately, that this treasure chest is not to be opened, and goes on at length about the horrible Cursed Medal that lurks inside. You can repeatedly tell him you want to open the chest anyway. If you do open it, he admits that the curse is pretty easy to circumvent (the item greatly increases the chance that enemies drop items in exchange for being unable to open your pouch inventory and thus use your healing potions, and all you need to do to circumvent the curse is to drop the medal off at the storage), and that the human tendency towards doggedly persistent curiosity is one of those things he finds so darn endearing about them.
  - An NPC in a house warns you not to break her pots. If you've ever played any other game in the franchise, you'll know that breaking pots equals cash, and most likely will see no reason why it should be any different here. Wrongo: bust her stuff and she'll charge you. A similar case happens in The Wind Waker if you go to the bottom floor of the House of Wealth and smash Mila's father's vases.
  - When you first enter the Lumpy Pumpkin, you can see a Piece of Heart hanging from the chandelier, and you're warned not to roughhouse on the second floor to prevent it from falling. Once you roll into the railing twice, it falls and you're forced to work to pay for a new one. Once you do a few jobs, the owner buys a more extravagant one and rewards you with another Piece of Heart.
- In Hyrule Warriors, some out-of-the-way keeps function as traps with no real way to tell them apart from the regular variety beforehand: if you clear them out in hopes of uncovering a treasure chest, you'll be trapped inside and need to kill off some Elite Mooks to open the doors. If you don't know about them beforehand and time it poorly, getting trapped inside one at a bad moment might cause you to lose the entire battle.
In Lemmings, the bomber skill will cause a lemming to explode. This is useful in some levels for removing part of the landscape or simply getting rid of a blocker, but no matter how you use it, it results in the death of the lemming you assign it to (unless it exits through the Level Goal during the countdown). In some levels, you are required to save 100%, but the game still gives you the bomber skill. Obviously, there is no way to use this skill and still complete the level successfully. It's mainly there to tempt idiots.
Lennus II takes this to a cruel extreme. It is very easy to talk to a shady NPC and wake up with your money missing — for good.
Lobotomy Corporation has a lot of Abnormalities that seem beneficial for the facility at first, but then turn out to be very dangerous if left unchecked.
- Don't Touch Me is a button designed to be enticing. It wants you to click on it. If you do, very bad things will happen to your facility.
- Plague Doctor seems benign at first. It's ZAYIN-classed, the lowest threat level of all. If you allow it to bless all 12 employees, it will transform into the extremely deadly WhiteNight, the most dangerous Abnormality in the whole game.
- A similar example to the one above is Army in Pink/Black. It's classified as a ZAYIN Abnormality, but it's a nasty trap for early-game players as it's actually an ALEPH-tier threat in disguise.
- The Lady Facing the Wall's file says Attachment Work has a Very High chance to score a good result. This is true, but it's also a very terrible idea, as doing so will decrease her Qliphoth counter.
- Working on Melting Love with anything but Repression will have her grant the employee who did it a nice SP recovery bonus and increased work success rate. So what's the problem? She will also infect that employee with her slime, who will spread the infection to everyone they pass. As time goes by, those infected employees (but not the Patient Zero) will start to turn into slime minions. If half of the department is turned into slime minions, then Melting Love will breach containment, turning the Patient Zero into a WAW-classed minion. Basically, Melting Love can set off a chain of events that leads to disaster for your workplace. You better keep Patient Zero in check if you want the facility to keep going.
- Flesh Idol harms whoever uses it with random damage, but those that survive it bring free healing and eventually, free sanity recovery to the entire facility. It has two caveats, however. The first and one you'll find out quickly is if worked on for a short period of time, the worker just dies. If worked on too long, the worker dies AND everything in the facility reaches a Qliphoth counter of 0 if possible, which means all but the earliest of facilities will probably just die very quickly.
- Beauty and the Beast responds very well to Repression work, so logically you should do it again, right? Performing Repression work on it twice in a row will cause it to die and whatever employee who entered to work on it will transform into another Beauty and the Beast, permanently killing that employee and continuing the cycle.
- ZAYIN-classed Abnormalities in general tend to fit under this, as they have okay benefits and are usually so easy that your weakest agents will have no issue dealing with it with breaks, so long as you don't do that one thing that will kill the agent instantly. Of the ZAYIN abnormalities, the only ones that are both not worse than they look AND don't have an instant kill condition are One Sin and Hundreds of Good Deeds, Old Faith and Promise, Mirror of Adjustment, and You're Bald....
In Loom, legend has it that looking under the hood of a Weaver is fatal. When he's got Bobbin captive, Cobb can't resist finding out whether the legend is true. It is.
The entire point of Lose/Lose is to be Schmuck Bait. It's a game sort of like Space Invaders, except that each alien is made up of a file on your computer. If you shoot an alien, that file is immediately and permanently deleted. Play it at your own risk and don't say we didn't warn you.
In The Lost Crown: A Ghosthunting Adventure, the Schmuck Bait turns out to be the crown itself... which you have no choice but to take anyway.

Schmuck Bait / Video Games: G to L

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