Schmuck Bait / Video Games: M to R

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M

• MARDEK:
  • In Chapter 3, in the Sun Temple, you come across a save point. In the same room, you find a conspicuous chest in the middle of your path. Opening that chest will unleash a Griffen that will crush you if unprepared. If you're using the official walkthrough, though, you'll be informed beforehand.
  • On a bigger note, after clearing the Sun Temple and gaining access to the world map, you can go to a place called the "Desert Path". There is nothing special about the Desert Path except for a cave. Inside the cave is a save point and another conspicuous chest. The walkthrough doesn't tell you anything about this chest. You'd better have learned from your previous encounter with the Griffen and save before opening it. Opening the chest will get you ruined by the Bone Demon inside that's meant to be fought at the end of the game. Beating him, however, grants you the Infinity +1 Sword for a hirable mercenary.
• Mass Effect Series:
  • In the series as a whole, the entire galactic civilization turns out to be the result of this. The Abusive Precursors, The Reapers, created the Mass Relay Network and placed the Citadel in the center of it. The Citadel is a self-maintaining habitable space station big enough to house an enormous population, thus ensuring any species would make it a hub of communication, commerce, and military strategy. Unfortunately, it is also a massive portal generator, intended to allow the Reapers to launch a surprise attack against the heart of any civilization that discovers it, then use all of the records left behind to find and exterminate the survivors.
  • In Mass Effect: As you enter the ExoGeni facility, there is a locked room. You can hack (read: lockpick) your way in to find a crate full of loot and what looks like a dead geth armature (walking tank). Touch the crate and the armature wakes up.
  • Mass Effect 2:
    • There's this character called Morinth, see. She's an asari, an alien race that can mate with anyone by joining nervous systems. She has a particularly rare genetic quirk that causes her to burn out the nervous system of whomever she mates with. This is extremely addictive for her and invariably fatal for the other person, but gives her a boost of strength and biotic power. Guess what she offers to you. Guess what one of your responses is. Guess what happens if you take her up on it...
    • There's a smaller example during Tali's loyalty quest. When you encounter Admiral Zaal'Koris vas Qwib-Qwib, Tali tells you not to ask about the name. One of the dialogue options is, of course, to ask about it.
      Tali: Oh, here we go.
  • Mass Effect 3:
    • Kai Leng deals you your only mandatory defeat in the game by using Cutscene Power to the Max, which gets under Shepard's skin and likely pisses off the player. The thing is, immediately after, your comm specialist is able to track Kai to his final hideout and Kai sends you an e-mail specifically to taunt you about your loss. This can cause you to want to forego any further asset-building missions, starting the endgame battle sequences with fewer war assets than you would have if you were patient and leading to a more costly victory, or even a defeat.
    • One of the series' most beloved Running Gags is the ability to punch out an annoying reporter on camera. Doing this at any point in the series will cost the player five or ten war assets in the third game, depending on if she was knocked out there or if she was punched previously.
  • Mass Effect: Andromeda:
    • The game utilizes the series' interrupt prompts, only this time the things they cause can be bad, as in Jaal's loyalty mission. Pushing the button causes the exact opposite of what he wanted, killing Akksul and making him a martyr for all the other xenophobic angara, rather than discrediting him. Also, it'll make Jaal unable to talk to Ryder for some time afterward.
    • In one out-of-the-way area on Elaaden, it's possible to find a group of scavengers standing around a crate. They won't attack, but that crate looks very tempting, doesn't it? Should you be unable to resist the urge, they attack. And the crate's contents are no different from any other in the game.
    • According to some of the angaran resistance, the kett have a habit of leaving vehicles lying around, unlocked but perfectly intact and functional, where anyone could steal them... until the angara get in, at which point it explodes. Though, as they point out, the kett only started doing this after the angara did it to them.
• Some of MechWarrior 2's missions take place in a large city full of buildings that can all be targeted to see their name and inspected to see their contents. You get warehouses containing food, business headquarters containing offices and the like - what you'd expect from any city. But if you wander away from anything pertaining to the mission and target everything out of curiosity, you might eventually find an otherwise nondescript building suspiciously called "Oh, just a building...", which will display "Don't shoot me!" upon inspection. Do the obvious and you'll trigger a nuclear explosion that destroys everything in the level, yourself included.
• Mega Man (Classic):
  • When fighting the Boobeam Trap (the fourth Wily stage boss) in Mega Man 2, the boss consists of five wall-mounted turrets which periodically shoot at you. Getting to them is made difficult by a complicated room arrangement, including five walls which can be destroyed by your Crash Bombs to make it easier to move around the chamber. Two of those destructible walls directly block one of the turrets each, and must be destroyed, but the remaining three are this trope. See, the Crash Bombs are the only weapon that can hurt the turrets, and you have exactly seven shots— one each for the two necessary walls and the five turrets. If you destroy any of the "optional" walls, you won't have enough weapon energy to finish the fight. (Technically there's two ways to avoid this: the first is to place one of the Crash Bombs so it destroys one of the turrets and one of the required walls simultaneously, which is a tricky shot, but leaves you with one bomb to spare if you pull it off. The second is that the walls don't regenerate if you die, so if you're not on your last life (or trying for a no-death run) you can blow up all the walls, die, refill your Crash Bombs on the way back to the boss chamber, and have plenty of ammo *and* no walls to obstruct you.)
  • Mega Man 5 has a room in Charge Man's stage where you have just climbed a ladder, to the right is the way on, and to the left is a long bed of spikes with no wall on the other side, which may lead you to wonder if something is on the other side (not a stretch, given that similar tricks have been present in earlier games). If you have Rush Jet, you can climb on, fly over the spikes to the other end... and end up hitting the end of the room, falling onto the spikes, and losing a life.
    GeminiLaser: DEATH! There's nothing on the other side but DEATH!
    • Likewise, the suspicious pit placed in Stone Man's stage.
    GeminiLaser: Before we begin let me satisfy my curiousity on something. *dies* Yeah, it's a pit!
  • Mega Man 9 has the Metools disguised as 1-ups. In normal gameplay, these are a bit more understandable to be tricked by, but in Endless Attack, where you get only one life...
  • Mega Man 11: For one of his taunts, Blast Man tells Mega Man to catch his bombs. Since when is that a good idea?
• Metal Gear:
  • About halfway through the Plant chapter of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, there is an electrified floor that the player has to deactivate in order to progress in the game. Colonel Campbell specifically warns you not to test it. But you can anyway.
  • Upon first meeting Ocelot in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Snake knocks him out. Once control is restored to the player, many players take their knife to him, causing a Time Paradox. This nets an achievement in the HD version.
• Minecraft:
  • A painting depicts the formation of blocks used to create the Wither, an extremely powerful Eldritch Abomination who will stop at nothing to kill you. If a player doesn't know that the blocks are used to form such a creature, and builds the formation of blocks out of curiosity, they're in trouble.
  • The mod Mystcraft can have books with this. Failing to create a book linking to the Overworld before jumping into an Age you've created will, more often than not, cause you to be stuck in that Age. Alternatively, certain Age symbols that you use to write Ages carry with them a hefty toll. Good luck mining all that extra ore in that Age when the entire world is falling apart at the seams.
• In Mister Mosquito, the just-barely-cracked-open microwave visibly has a huge load of heart rings inside. Upon entering, the microwave closes and roasts you alive if you don't get back out in a short period of time.
• In Monster Rancher 2, one of the battles you can enter is the New Year's Cup. It has a difficulty rating of F (which can make people think it's lower than the lowest ranking of E), and has a prize of merely 500 gold. Some novice players will enter their new monsters, thinking it'll be an easy tournament and a good way to give them some battle expirience. They will also be caught off guard, as the "F" stands for "Free-for-all", and all the monsters in the tournament can (and likely will) kill new monsters with one attack.
• Mother 3:
  • A herd of enemies called Cattlesnakes can be found roaming peacefully about a field, making no attempt to fight you, but a nearby sign warns you not to try to battle them. You can battle them, but they're very hard enemies with very high offense, and when you first go to the area where you can find them, they will almost certainly steamroll you.
  • If you approach an enemy from the back, it has to spend a turn turning around to face you from the front, leaving it vulnerable for a turn or two. Cue an enemy that launches missiles out of its rear.
• Myst: Atrus invoked this trope when he designed his library. The shelves are full of books leading to worlds of bounty, easily plundered, but the two books given pride of place on lecterns are traps. Atrus explicitly told his sons never to touch them. Tragically, this might have contributed to the boys' Face Heel Turns, as they were driven by their fantasies of what the books might hold, but this also caused them to be Hoist By Their Own Petard when they entered the books and found there was no way out.
• Metal Max 2 pulls this off at least two times:
  • Cagliostro, one of the Grappler Emperors, plays dead and waits for you to walk over to check on Dr Eva. Anyone savvy enough about dealing with Wanted enemies would notice that he didn't blow up and that the Bounty Crushed theme didn't play, so it is already suspicious enough. But check Dr Eva without checking Cagliostro first and you are forced into another battle with him except without your tanks.
  • Bull Frog is another one who pulls a dirty trick on the Hunter: after his first defeat, he runs away and enters the teleporter in the back room, but not before setting off the security system and filling the building with enemies. Of course, the teleporter leads to a room with a tank, you might be thinking that's your new ride out there... Except not, it's Bullfrog's tank, have fun fighting him on foot because you were too lazy to backtrack to the first floor to avoid the very obvious trap.

N

• In The Neverhood, the only way to die partway through the game and get the "Game Over" screen is to jump into a pit, which is clearly labelled with signs that say not to jump there...
• From Neverwinter Nights:
  • In Shadows of Undrentide, one section of the kobold caves includes a treasure room with prominent red arrows pointing to it and four lowered gates around it, which might as well have a sign reading "OBVIOUS TRAP" above it. When you open the chest and just find a note from the kobolds laughing at your foolishness, you're probably sighing and nodding in agreement as the gates spring up around you.
  • In the mod A Dance with Rogues, one mission involves pretending to be a stripper so you can infiltrate the mayor's mansion and steal a statue, which you are warned in no unambiguous terms not to tamper with. If you use the item's "unique power", it summons a succubus (a demon, which is rather more powerful than you should be at that point).
• NieR: Automata has a handful of Joke Endings triggered by doing intentionally counter-intuitive actions the game warns you about.
  • The description for the "OS Chip", a skill chip that is equipped at the beginning of the game, warns "Removal means death". It should be safe to remove, though. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
  • Activating the self-destruct option while on the Bunker, an orbital station that contains all of your back up data. Normally, you would respawn at a travel station, but since you just destroyed the one place that held your data...
  • At one point, Jackass will give you a mackerel, a fish that is said to have adverse effects on androids when consumed. It sure looks tasty, though...
• No Man's Sky: The Whispering Eggs found near abandoned buildings look like any other rare treasure. However, attempting to harvest one spawns a wave of ferocious Biological Horrors that can overwhelm a careless explorer in seconds.
• No More Heroes: Bad Girl sometimes drops to her knees and starts crying. If you attack her while she's crying, she will instantly kill you. Sometimes. On other occasions, she really is crying and wide open to attack. Look at her hands - if one hand is on the bat, she'll kill you; if both hands are on her face, she's open.

O

• Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee:
  • There are fireflies that give hints if you stand still and chant for a while. One of those hints is: "Watch...out...for...that...bat" — whereupon the Goddamned Bats swoop down on you and kill you.
  • The very end of the game has a countdown until Deadly Gas floods the factory and, should the player rescue the last worker, they will be given the one-use ability to avoid capture by murdering the evil C.E.O.s and the capturing guards almost instantly. Doing so, however, leaves the player alone in the board room with the still-counting-down gas timer and a lever labelled "GAS SHUTOFF", which drops two more guards into the room, forcing the player to be captured anyway or suffocate to death.
  • Near the end of the game, you'll find a lever marked "Ring for Service". Pulling it spawns a Slig that shoots you dead on the spot. You need to possess said Slig in order to advance, and getting out of its line of fire is fairly easy.
  • In a similar example to the above, one of the Magog on the March segments in Exoddus informs you, "If you have any further questions, feel free to pull the lever to your right." Pulling that one sends a crate down to crush you.
• Otter Island: Whatever you do, do not open that knocking door. Seriously. Zach's life will thank you for it.

P

• Papers, Please:
  • Throughout the game, your job as a border inspector is to keep out anyone who is not allowed in your country or turn people away if their papers are not in order. At a few points, you're given papers by a rebel group aiming to overthrow your government, and they walk away after giving you their messages. Later on, the head inspector visits you and tells you about the rebels while also requesting that if you have any information about them, you should tell him ASAP. Most players playing for the first time would very likely give the rebels' papers to the man, thinking they are doing the right thing. Nope! Giving your boss those papers will have him suspect you of being an affiliate with the rebels and you're arrested for being associated with terrorists. Even the achievement for this mocks you for being too honest.
  • At one point, the rebel group will give you a little envelope with poisonous powder inside, which you are to apply to the passport of a person the rebels want out of the picture. The envelope has "DO NOT TOUCH POWDER" written inside. Three guesses as to what happens if you touch the powder, and the first two don't count.
  • Early in the game, you receive a hefty 1000 credit bribe. Accepting it will cause you to be ratted out by neighbors, thus costing you the money you took plus your savings. If you burn the 1000 credit bribe, but accept the second bribe which is double that amount, you get a Non-Standard Game Over. Accepting the first bribe is fine if you need cash to get through the day, just so long as you let an EZIC agent in the next day to clear your name.
  • Late in the game, the rebels ask you to assassinate a key target while one of them provides a distraction. Regardless of whether you use the non-lethal tranquilizer rifle or the deadly sniper rifle, shooting the target will result in your arrest. Worse still, the rebels will send you a note revealing that your replacement isn't cooperating with them and they will have to stop their plans for a while.
  • Your supervisor Dimitri orders you to admit entry to Shae Pierskova, who he says is an old friend of his. When Shae arrives at your booth, she presents diplomatic authorization, but because Arstotzka is not one of the countries on the document, you can point this out, at which point the Detain button appears. As if noticing the button that she shouldn't be able to see, she warns you that you probably shouldn't detain her because Dimitri is "not forgiving person". Detaining her will result in Dimitri having you arrested the next day on made-up charges, resulting in a Non-Standard Game Over. However, if you merely deny her, you get a verbal ass-chewing from Dimitri but no formal consequence.
• The Path only gives you two instructions: Go to grandmother's house, and Stay on the Path. Guess what you do.
• PAYDAY 2: In Henry's Rock, there's a button simply labeled "Do Not Press". You can press it... on Overkill difficulty or above only. Pressing it causes tear gas to rain from the ceiling, along with two turrets.
• In the Royal version of Persona 5, the boss fight with Shadow Kamoshida has a phase where he pelts you with super powerful volley ball spikes. After surviving the first one by guarding against it, he brings in a Cognitive Suzui, and you have to choose to either deal enough damage to Kamoshida that he loses focus and can't attack, or kill the Cognitive Suzui before she can give Kamoshida the ball. Whatever you choose, he's going to do a volleyball spike attack next turn, and after taking the last one, it's unlikely that you'll survive this one. At such an early point in the game, it's unlikely that you'll be able to deal enough damage to Kamoshida in one round to stop him, and even if you do, he'll just have Suzui hand him another one. Meanwhile, Suzui is weak against everything, and killing her ends the phase. If you have Rakunda, you can very easily kill her in one round.
• Phantasy Star IV has a big one near the end of the game. Chaz is offered to be taught Megid after being forced to kill an illusion of Alys. If you say yes, you're deemed unworthy and a Hopeless Boss Fight ensues that quickly results in your death and Game Over. If you say no, you've passed the test and are taught Megid by proving that you can control your anger (and thus, the spell).
• In the old game Pharaoh's Tomb, scrolls make blocks of bricks appear. Usually, this is beneficial. However, sometimes they aren't. For example, there's a shortcut in one level — except taking it means you collect a scroll that bricks you in. In another, you can collect two idols for several thousand points — except first, you collect a scroll which (yep) bricks you in.
• The very short Interactive Fiction game Pick Up the Phone Booth and Die is one of the purest examples of Schmuck Bait ever created. And yes, if you pick up the phone booth, you die. There is a way to win, though.
• In Planescape: Torment, one of the quests involves a box that The Nameless One is forced to deliver to several people because they don't want it, and they state repeatedly to never open it, that is it not good to know what's in it, and more importantly, to never, ever, under any circumstances leave the Hive (the part of the city the game starts in) while carrying the box. Classic Schmuck Bait. There are actually three ways to complete this quest: you can open the box yourself like an idiot and fight a low-level demon which is unlikely to be a threat unless there's no one in the party with a magic weapon, you can simply leave the Hive while it's still in your inventory (which causes the box to vanish with no apparent results other than the gem on it replacing it in your inventory), or you can complete a quest that has you run all over the Hive to find someone that will destroy the box and send its contents to multiple dimensions, netting you some XP and a small amount of money from the guy who gave you the box, provided you manage to find him. Choose the second option, and near the end of the game, you end up encountering "The Fiend from Moridor's Box", which turns out to be the strongest monster in the game. In fine D&D tradition, taking the hardest way out nets you the best treasure and a huge amount of XP... if you survive.
• Point-and-click adventure game Please, Don't Touch Anything is built entirely around this, given the title and premise. However, one of the game's endings requires the player to do it.
• Pokémon:
  • Pokémon Red, Blue, and Yellow has the Magikarp salesman. 500 Pokémon Dollars for a low-level Pokémon that starts off with no useful moves? While it's still a bit overpriced, the good news is he's available far sooner than the fishing rods are, allowing you to evolve it into a Gyarados before you'd even be able to catch one normally. The guy shows up in Pokémon Black and White too, but this time, it's after you beat the main storyline, and this is the only way you can get a Gyarados in-game, other than transferring or trading one; you can't fish for them in Unova.
  • The monster houses in the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series look innocent enough, initially appearing to simply be empty rooms with a higher number of items in them than usual. However, the moment you set foot in them, close to a dozen enemy Pokémon will appear out of nowhere, and likely put you through a lot of pain if you weren't prepared for it. They also tend to be laden with traps, which can lead to further complications even after getting rid of the enemies if you don't tread cautiously. Though for a player prepared for it with a high-powered room wipe move like Heat Wave, they're exceptionally good at farming experience.
  • In Pokémon Platinum, there is a member of Team Galactic running back and forth, looking up and down, about five paces each way, as if suffering an attack of epilepsy, in the Galactic Warehouse. He is one of the few Mooks in the building (and, indeed, in the game) who doesn't challenge you to a battle on sight. As those types are usually the ones who give the player useful items or information upon speaking to them, one is naturally inclined to do so... at which point, he challenges you to a battle.
  • Pokémon Scarlet and Violet: Before facing the Elite Four, you have to take an interview assessment with Riku, and a single wrong answer will mean failing. The last question is "Do you like Pokemon?". Given that pretty much every game in the series ham-fistedly drills into you that your Mons are your friends, as well as the meta-level fact that whoever is playing the game probably wouldn't be taking the test if they didn't like Pokemon, the only reason you'd ever get it wrong is if you got it wrong on purpose for shits and giggles.
• Portal:
  • In Portal, the Big Bad pulls a Briar Patching gambit in regards to a weird object she just dropped, even going so far as to lampshade her use of Reverse Psychology. Messing with it is bad for you.
    GLaDOS: I wouldn't bother with that thing. My guess is that touching it will make your life even worse, somehow.
    I don't want to tell you your business, but if it were me I'd leave that thing alone.
    Do you think I'm trying to trick you with reverse psychology? I mean, seriously now.
  • Portal 2 has quite a few examples. To wit:
    • The "missing" Emancipation Grill, which GLaDOS specifically tells you not to bring anything through. Sure enough, she just wants to Yank the Dog's Chain.
    • GLaDOS attempts to lure you to her "final test", which is conveniently already solved and has an open doorway ostensibly leading to the outside. Falling for it earns you an achievement... and a reload.
    • A door marked "GLaDOS Emergency Shutdown and Cake Dispensary — Keep Unlocked". She savagely lampshades this one, despite it being a case of Stupidity Is the Only Option.
    GLaDOS: I honestly, truly didn't think you'd fall for that. In fact, I devised a much more elaborate trap further ahead for when you got through this easy one. If I'd known you'd let yourself get captured this easily, I would have just dangled a turkey leg on a rope from the ceiling.
    • Several of Wheatley's Death Traps, or as he refers to one of them, a "Death Option". He goes so far as to express pleasant surprise if you actually fall for them, and one earns you an achievement.
• After you are released from the Human Juicing Machines in Prey (2006), you come to a switch beneath an observation window overlooking the same machine. Pushing the switch causes the machine to resume its juicing of the other captives, and it cannot be deactivated again. Way to go, hero.
• Progressbar 95: Clippy may show up carrying an "x4" sign and saying "Don't press!" while a timer ticks down. Actually pressing the button that closes him makes him say "I told you!" and spawns four copies of him.
• Prey (2017): The player starts the game being told they'll be taken to work on a helicopter, and being an Immersive Sim, the player has the option to climb on the helicopter and get themselves killed from it's blades, earning the No Show achievement.

R

• Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One Starts with Qwark being offered to accept an "Inter-Galactic Tool of Justice Award" for a heroic deed he had no part in. The award certainly sounds like an insult, there are no cameras or spectators at the site of the ceremony, the podium is fashioned from old planks of wood and its located between the gaping jaws of a Light Eating Z'Grute frozen in cryostasis. Since Qwark is a narcissistic idiot, he sees nothing suspicious about it. Surprising neither Ratchet or Clank, the 'award' is a trap set by Dr. Nefarious. Things escalate from there.
• There are a few strangers who you can meet in Red Dead Redemption II who make it quite obvious that going off with them is a bad idea.
  • There's a creepy man you meet in the swamp whose name is Sonny. Sonny will ask you if you want to go into his house and be his "friend". Don't do it, because Sonny will rape you, and it's not Played for Laughs.
  • There's another odd man you can find who lives on a pig farm. He and his "wife" will invite you in for dinner. If you accept, they'll roofie you, steal all of your money, and throw you in a mass grave. Turns out that his "wife" is also his sister.
  • A guy in the Hub City of Saint Denis will offer you a deal on guns if you follow him down an alley. He robs you and takes half your money, but unlike the pig farmer incest couple, you can't get the money back.
• Resident Evil:
  • Resident Evil: In one of the rooms there is a neatly-mounted Shotgun on the wall of an otherwise plain room, taking it and not replacing it with the Broken Shotgun you can find in the other areas of the mansion results in the previous empty square room separating the room you're currently in from the hallway locking both doors after you pass through the exit of the room containing said shotgun, then a slow-but-inevitable (unless you're Jill and Barry saves you in an iconic cutscene) Descending Ceiling crushes you.
  • Resident Evil 4 and its remake allow you to shoot the lake in which Del Lago resides in before getting on the boat. Do so enough times and the creature jumps up to eat you for an instant Game Over.
• Rise of Nations has Greenland in the New World campaign: it's very hard to take, because you have to gather up a lot of food and endure constant harassment while doing so. Your reward? The Fish resource, which can be found basically anywhere there's a coast. Hey, it's Greenland, what did you expect?

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