Schmuck Bait / Video Games: S to Z

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S

• A lot of the SCPs in SCP – Containment Breach are blocked off from the player by a little more than a keycard, or having the player really going out of their way to have themselves be killed by whatever horror lies in the next room. Of course, being a SCP-reader and knowing what each of them are helps in avoiding them (or embracing them, if you wish to see The Many Deaths of You).
• Serious Sam absolutely adores this trope. While there are some that are painfully obvious, i.e. a +1 Health pickup in the middle of a wide-open area that would be ideal for encircling whatever schmuck took that bait and then blasting him to bits, there are some that trigger on picking up certain secrets as well!
• Shadowrun Returns: The PC honestly believes that their old, alcoholic, junkie friend Sam Watts could afford a 100,000-nuyen life insurance policy?
• Shadowverse: Robin Hood is frequently cited as an example of "why you should read the card", with anecdotes of entire fields of Fairies or Skeletons being annihilated by his effect due to the opponent futilely trying to take him out in combat. Forestcraft has other cards that can employ this trope, usually in the form of things like Man-Eating Mangrove and Wood of Brambles intercepting attacking minions or Beauty and the Beast shrugging off a hard removal.
• All Shin Megami Tensei games feature this to some extent. Many, in fact, are inventively nasty, such as tricking you into healing bosses, fighting them under major disadvantages, powering them up, willingly walking into traps, and many, many more. Shin Megami Tensei IV, for example, has the boss fight with King Kenji. Towards the end, after losing enough HP, his sprite disappears and he claims to lose, and the game asks if you want to pick up the remote on the ground next to him. Astute players will notice that he hasn't done the standard boss explosion animation yet, that the boss music is still going, and that this choice occurs during battle rather than afterwards. Picking up the remote anyway results in Kenji sucker-punching you with an attack that causes physical damage and Sick status to all party members.
• In SimCity 2000 every branch of the city's municipal services can be funded or de-funded with a slider. If you move the Transit Authority funding any lower than 100%, however, your advisor doesn't take it well: "YOU CAN'T CUT BACK ON FUNDING! YOU WILL REGRET THIS!" He's not wrong: while reducing funding to other departments is often a safe, good idea, de-funding transit will cause infrastructure to disintegrate and is not a good idea. The game lets you do it anyway, though.
• The Sims takes this to Too Dumb to Live levels when it comes to the Cow Plant in The Sims 2: University (also downloadable content for The Sims 3). Hey, look! That plant has a slice of cake in its enormous tooth-filled mouth! Certainly nothing bad can come of—
• In Skies of Arcadia, Vyse can find a handkerchief hanging on the wall of Aika's house on Pirate Isle. If you check it out, Vyse lifts it up to find a pinhole allowing him to see into Aika's bedroom. Aika is less than happy to find him inadvertently peeping on her, but Vyse notes that covering it with a hankie on the outside only draws attention.
• The frozen pole in the IF game So Far. The invitation to lick the pole is Schmuck Bait. But the game triple-dog-dares you to lick it anyway (in case you needed even more convincing).
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • In Sonic 3 & Knuckles, you can find a few monitors with Robotnik's face on them. Naturally, breaking these open damages you.
  • In Sonic Riders, Sonic's arch-enemy Dr. Eggman appears on a gigantic TV screen and says he's holding a competition where entrants must give him their Chaos Emeralds. Sonic decides to enter and gives Eggman the Chaos Emerald he just found.
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), right before the fight with Iblis (2nd form) during either Sonic or Shadow's story, Rouge finds the cyan Chaos Emerald floating in the air. As Rouge flies towards it, Shadow yells "DON'T TOUCH IT!!!" right before Iblis appears and allegedly devours it.
• Soul Calibur III: After repeatedly trying to warn Yun Seong about Soul Edge, Seong Mina resorts to the next best thing: beat him to it, then set a trap... with pork buns. You'd think he'd at least wonder where they came from, but he actually falls for it and starts to take one. Which was just the opportunity Mina was waiting for.
• In South Park: The Fractured but Whole, Cartman's hideout has a Cube of Ultimate Destruction with a sign warning you to not touch it. Touching it or smacking it has Cartman yelling at you to cut it out. Do it enough times and the cube breaks, causing the entire universe to be completely wiped out.
• Many Sierra adventure games, particularly Space Quest. It's something of a malicious joy for them.
  • Pressing the "Don't Touch" button in the escape pod of Space Quest I: The Sarien Encounter causes the pod to plunge into King's Quest I: Quest For The Crown or Conquests of the Longbow (depending on whether you're playing the original game or the VGA remake) and crash upon impact. Actually, it's one of the coolest deaths in the game, so just seeing it might be worth doing it, so long as you save the game first.
  • On Labion in Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge, there is a square of grass outlined with lighter pixels. Walking onto it will drop you into a pitfall. Trying to look at the trap will cause the narrator to call you paranoid (an even more obvious giveaway).
  • Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers:
    • One computer terminal allows you to delete a file called "Space Quest 4" from its hard drive — attempting to do so aborts the game and returns you to the DOS prompt/Windows desktop without a second warning.
    • "You were warned not to break into the change machine, but did you LISTEN?"
  • The SCS Eureka's self-destruct mechanism in Space Quest V: The Next Mutation at any time other than when it's (really) the only option you have left.
• In Spades, before the play, you bid the number of tricks you expect to take. One possible bid is Nil, where you score a 100-point bonus if you take no tricks... or a 100-point penalty if you take even one trick. Sometimes you are offered the option of a Nil bid when holding the Ace of Spades, the one card guaranteed to win any trick.
• Spelunky contains various Indiana Jones-style traps, one or two different types per area. They're all very clearly marked by a shiny (and valuable) idol. Grabbing the idol will set off the trap, and — if you haven't seen that particular variety of trap before — it will kill you.
• Happens a few times in Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion, mostly in the DLC. When you reach the checkpoint after room 250, Spooky will tell you to look behind you, which results in a LOUD cacophony of Specimen 1. If you value your life in the Karamari Hospital DLC, it's also best to avoid sitting on the red chair, or to avoid any seemingly endless hallways.
• In Spore, there used to be a "Bad Baby!" achievement, which you could only get if a creation of yours was banned from the servers. Naturally, everyone and their mother started deliberately uploading offensive creations in order to get this achievement. It got so bad that the achievement was eventually removed from the game.
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:
  • Anomalies, semi-invisible energy surges, frequently serve as this. They produce valuable, powerful artifacts which can be seen floating in the air from a distance, but dash to grab it too quickly, and the anomaly will be happy to rip you to shreds. In fact, the Zone (the game world) itself serves as a form of Schmuck Bait, as people are drawn to enter it by the promise of a making a fortune finding artifacts, but the mutated wildlife, invisible anomalies, and hostile warring human factions means your life will likely be pretty short. If anything, this acts as a form of natural selection — anyone who manages to survive in the Zone is an ironclad badass. Or obscenely lucky.
  • You can sometimes find what looks like a wounded loner (complete with sunrise suit) calling out for help. Approaching him will cause him and his bandit friends to stand up and start shooting at you.
  • Most dead bodies with good equipment are schmuck bait to some extent. After all, where there's a corpse, there's usually something nearby that can make corpses.
• Star Control:
  • You're given repeated warnings to stop asking about the Androsynth. If you don't take the hint and find a different topic to talk about, the Orz turn hostile and attack... which sucks for you, because they're normally one of the only two races in the game that are immediately outright helpful.
  • Late in the game, the Utwig will give you a very large bomb. Do not play with it.
• Star Shift Origins: The Novus soldiers note that Raxion II has a suspicious lack of guards despite it being an important location for the ESA. This is because the ESA always planned to let Novus take the planet, only for them to unleash radioactive gas on the planet and kill everyone, including ESA civilians. They then frame Novus Federation for this atrocity in order to win the propaganda war.
• Stellaris:
  • There's a quest where you are able to reach into a psychic realm, and one option you can get is to make a pact with an entity who promises you vast power, in the form of a long-term amount of huge bonuses to your empire. At a price. The game tooltip says in bright red letters "DO NOT DO THIS". After the 50 years of bonuses are up, the entity annihilates your entire empire's population, destroys any ring worlds and orbital habitats you have built, and renders every planet uninhabitable, except for one planet with a handful of people on it. It also spawns a near-invincible avatar of destruction to devour the entire galaxy. The player's pitiful exile colony is left for last. It is widely (but incorrectly) assumed that Alexis Kennedy, one of the main writers for Fallen London, as well as the Horizon Signal event chain in Stellaris, was involved in this particular option. He wasn't, but his influence is clear.
  • New players might encounter in their expansion inexplicably uninhabited Gaia worlds that feature a ton of resources and can be colonised by any life, regardless of their usual homeworld preferences, and have unique names like "Pristine Jewel". Not believing their luck, these players eagerly establish colonies on the world without realising that these world are the Holy worlds of a Fallen Empire, an ancient civilisation with technology centuries ahead of the players'. The aliens will contact you and very angrily demand you vacate the unspoiled planet immediately, or face their wrath. And if you are so stupid as to blow said holy planet to bits with a Colossus...
• In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fan game Story of the Blanks, where you play as Applebloom, you are warned by Zecora not to go into the forest after dark, and Twilight orders you not to go anywhere as she tries to clear the blocked forest exit. Of course, you have to follow that mysterious pony deeper into the forest for the game plot to progress...
• When you reach Mr. X in the final stage of Streets of Rage, he'll ask if you want to join his crime syndicate. Saying yes in single player mode has him open up a trapdoor beneath you, dumping you back to stage six.
• Streets of Rogue has a cyanide pill item, which has a predictable result if you use it on yourself. The description even reads "Maybe don't eat this. Seriously." It does have uses, since you can use it to poison air supplies, poison drinks, or fill a water pistol with instant-death spray.
• In Subverse, the player is the captain of an interstellar pirate ship, whose crew is actively making an enemy of the Imperium who controls much of the Prodigium galaxy. One of the Imperium's member species are the Kloi, a race of highly developed, materialistic, and narcissistic Space Elves who once wiped out entire species and caused huge swathes of destruction until the Imperium brought them to heel and got them to agree to never do interstellar military operations again after a long, brutal campaign. Especially prominent if the player goes after they've recruited the party member Ela, and thus humiliated the kloi government, made themselves persona non grata, and are being actively hunted down in violation of the aforementioned agreement, the player can choose to fly close to and investigate their largest, most well-armed, and well-protected space naval yard. Subverted when the game refuses and says it's too much of a terrible idea.
• If you're told "Do not do this" in Sunless Sea, please don't do it. If you're told you can't return somewhere, then don't return. And if you click something that not only has that sort of warning, but tells you straight up it'll make you Eat Your Crew, you can consider yourself either a Schmuck, or too damn curious for your own good.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Super Mario World:
    • In some stages, you'll encounter Lakitu, the turtle enemy floating around in a cloud at the top of the screen, dangling a 1-Up mushroom at the end of a fishing line. If you grab the item, he'll rain Spinies down on you for the rest of the level. Luckily, he's easily killable and you can steal his cloud afterwards to bypass large parts of the stage. Amusingly enough, the ghost house levels feature Fishin' Boos instead which try to do the same, except with a blue flame that hurts you instead.
    • At least one hack pulled a move that makes the infamous Kaizo Trap seem easy. At the start of a certain level, there was a message block saying not to hit the midway point. A little later, you see a seemingly inaccessible 3up moon with no way out. And then you see the midway point. If you hit the midway point and died later in that level, you'd spawn next to where the 3up moon was, and the message block there chastised you for not following directions.
  • Paper Mario:
    • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door:
    • Midway through the sixth chapter, you encounter a ghost on a train who would like to help you on your quest, but, before he does, insists you help him first. Turns out he left his diary somewhere in the baggage car and has been tormented for years with the knowledge that someone might find it and read it, preventing him from passing on to his next existence. He agrees to help you if you get the book, but he very sternly warns you that under no circumstances are you to open and read it. The game deliberately berates this point, meaning that if you are even mildly curious, you will have your interest piqued. It even goes so far as to put a message on the game's bulletin board after the chapter saying, "Good thing you didn't read my diary!" Once you find the book in question, you can select it from your inventory and try to open it. The game will make you go through several confirmation screens before the diary finally opens. Your reward for your curiosity? An instant game over.
    • After bringing Hooktail, the first chapter boss, down to 0 HP, she will beg for mercy and offer to give you 1000 coins, a rare badge, and the opportunity to smell her feet. Saying no to all of these will lead to Hooktail eating the audience and reviving half of her HP, but saying yes will lead to not only that, but also getting hit with a quick cheap shot for 5 HP of damage. The fact that many characters warn you of this tactic should be proof enough that it's a dumb idea.
    • Legend states that beyond the Thousand-Year Door beneath Rogueport lies untold treasures. However, that was a myth forged by Beldam. Grodus and the X-Nauts know the truth, which is that the door is the prison of the Shadow Queen and that the seven crystal stars are the locks on the door.
    • Subverted with the four demons locked inside black treasure chests that trick you into letting them out, and then "curse" you... by giving you extremely useful abilities that are necessary to beat the game. This is because these demons used to be the four legendary heroes who ended up in their current state because they were cursed by the Big Bad, and are using Loophole Abuse to help you.
  • Super Paper Mario:
    • The game keeps the tradition alive by Tippi warning Mario about going into outer space without a helmet. Oddly enough, you can refuse to put on the helmet — and if you do so enough times, you go into space and die. There are several points in the game like this that aren't always obvious, but you'll be warned several times about it, up to and including refusing to start the adventure in the first place. More than one person inadvertently lost before starting because they didn't think the game would actually let you fail after a half hour unskippable cutscene.
    • Several rooms in one chapter feature mushrooms just tantalizingly out of reach. They move away if you attempt to approach them. If you chase them, various nasty things will happen to you — such as getting dropped into a pit. You actually collect the mushroom in all but one case, so you can easily exit a trap with more health than you went in with.
  • Super Mario Sunshine:
    • In Noki Bay, there is lone 1-Up standing at a nearby wall for an easy pickup. Attempting to grab it causes a punching glove to pop out from the wall and send Mario flying a few feet.
    • In Delfino Plaza's infamous Lily Pad Ride level, there is a Warp Pipe at the end to trick you into thinking that you can enter and get sent back to the start of the level to try again if you missed any of the Red Coins you need to get the Shine Sprite. In reality, this takes you back to Delfino Plaza, which means you have to go through the whole process of getting back to the level.
  • A disconcertingly large part of Fawful's scheme in Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story relies on characters eating any piece of food offered to them by a complete stranger. Or, in one case, by the person you're trying to defeat.
  • You get some of these in Luigi's Mansion.
    • One of the first is a string of coins leading past one hallway door and to a second. If you notice the second door has no placemat and sticks out, among other traits, you should realize it's a trap door (you'll find a lot of these "doors" in the game).
    • When Luigi looks in a mirror in the storage room behind the ballroom, he sees a red button that says "Don't push" reflected on the other side. Considering Stupidity Is the Only Option here, he presses it and part of the wall rolls back to reveal a storage thing in the floor, and a poster that says danger. Again, the only way to proceed is to vacuum up the poster and then push the other Big Red Button, releasing all the Boos.
• Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror: At the beginning of the third level, a plant worker standing in front of a fuse box tells his coworkers not to throw the breaker switch. As Video Game Cruelty Potential, you can assassinate him by electrocution.
• The original System Shock sets you up rather evilly around halfway through. SHODAN plans to wipe out all life on Earth with a massive barrage of laser fire from an orbital station, and naturally it's your job to stop her. Unfortunately, you stumble across an inadequately labelled laser-control switch. Play with it, and... well. SHODAN will be very pleased, to say the least.

T

• The Talos Principle:
  • For what reason is that tower there, really, if you are not allowed to enter?
  • In one of the desert areas, there is a tree with a sign labelled "don't look up". If you actually do look up, a fruit falls on your head.
• Team Fortress 2:
  • The sprays, which can be used to lay traps for enemy players; apply a spray, hide nearby, and ambush them when they stop to look at it. One griefer used images of scantily-clad ladies. Some Snipers will use sprays with small, hard-to-read text to trick players into reading it while they line up a perfect shot.
    
    Also works for some decal-customization-capable melee weapons, for example the Conscientious Objector. A Demoman wielding a customized one, a Chargin' Targe or Splendid Screen, and Ali Baba's Wee Booties (and maybe any weird hat as well for good measure) can confuse certain noobs long enough for one to execute a charge-kill. At point blank if the noob is really new to the game, natch.
  • Clever Heavies can use their Sandviches as Schmuck Bait. Throw the Sandvich someplace where an enemy is likely to notice it, wait for the schmuck to take the bait, then pump 'em full of minigun lead. Works especially well with the Tomislav (every minigun except the Tomislav makes a loud WHIRRRR when preparing to fire. The Tomislav just makes a small click!).
  • Spies who can disguise themselves as high-priority targets from their own team (such as Snipers or Medics) and make enemies follow them hoping to get an easy kill... only to go around a corner and back-stab them, or lure them into an ally Sentry Gun or Heavy. Another trick with Spies is to adopt the famous spycrab pose or do something like a conga taunt. Have a Pyro or another suitable class hide near you. Eventually someone from the enemy team will notice and try to kill you rather than laughing. Lead them to the Pyro and watch the fireworks.
  • One that involves cooperation with another player is chasing a friendly Spy disguised as a member of the other team. This is particularly effective if the attacker is using a secondary or melee weapon and missing and the Spy is disguised as a target with low health. The enemies will throw all their normal caution about Spies to the wind and rush in to help. The Spy can get often get an easy backstab, and if not, the Spy and the "attacker" can usually finish the opponent off anyway.
  • One classic trick in the common map 2Fort is to lay a wad of stickybombs on the medkit in your team's sewer as you head out through it for the other team's fort. If the Demoman encounters more resistance then planned, he just runs back to his own sewer and backpedals towards safety rather than going for the medkit. Since players instinctively jump towards the medkits when entering the sewers, they often stand right on the bombs. The tactic is so effective that many players ignore the highly circumstantial nature of the trap and call it griefing.
  • New players can expect to be told to use unbindall in the console at least once, whether told it is a cheat command, or for a more legitimate purpose. The command, as its name implies, unbinds all your keys from their commands, preventing you from doing anything until you reset your keys. And many new players don't know how to reset their keys...
  • The Gunmettle update added the ability for players to pick up weapons from killed enemies, which drops your weapon in its place. If you're lucky enough to have an incredibly cool gun like an Australium or an Unusual, you can kill someone, then drop said cool gun in its place, then pick a place to hide. Someone is bound to walk by and try to pick it up, and you can then kill them while they're distracted with doing so.
• Terraria:
  • One of the possible title messages says, "Press alt-f4." Alt-f4 is used in Windows to close a window.
  • Occasionally while traveling underground, you can find a large ore vein with a Plunger Detonator, which will set off explosives that will mine all the surrounding ore... and also blow up anyone unknowing enough to have activated it.
    • However it can be safely set off if you are on the right side of the plunger and right click it. Who ever told you that you HAVE to jump on the plunger?
  • While going underground, you may encounter a Lost Girl who looks and acts like the characters you can rescue to invite them to your town... until you approach her and she turns into a Nymph that can rip you to shreds.
  • The Old Man by the Dungeon near one of the world's edges tells you not to enter until you have beaten his master, Skeletron. Despite his warnings, the door is unlocked. Yet take his word: going too far in before killing Skeletron summons the Dungeon Guardian, a nearly invincible giant skull that can kill you with one hit. Making matters worse was that prior to 1.4, it was possible for a Disc-One Nuke weapon to spawn on platforms above the Dungeon's danger zone, making it more tempting to peek deep in to the entrance if it wasn't already in the main entrance.
  • One of the last major updates introduced booby trapped chests, and they really stand out: there are dart traps facing it, bounlder traps above, and even dynamite underneath. You can try opening it, but you are unlikely to survive. If you got Wire Cutters by then, just trim the wires. Otherwise, mine out the dynamite and shield yourself and the chest with blocks.
    • What makes it even stranger? It's a gold chest, which is found in underground cabins under normal circumstances. But there's always the off chance that the trapped chest will be disguised as an underwater or biome chest, making it harder to tell whether or not it is a safe chest at first glance.
    • If you are lucky, terrain generation will break one or more traps around trapped chests, so it is possible to have a trapped chest that can be robbed without punishment.
    • Sometimes underground fairies will helpfully lead the player straight to them. You get no points for failing the spot check before opening it.
  • A new World Seed introduced in version 1.4.4 (Labor of Love) called "No Traps" does the exact opposite of what it says and worse: adds new types of traps, makes surface traps, and turns the very useful Life Crystal into a special type of boulder.
• Thief:
  • In the Bonehoard level of Thief: The Dark Project, a wall carving with precious-looking diamonds for eyes warns you "Stay away from my face, thief, or you'll be sorry." Just approaching it is enough to trigger the trap: an endless stream of fireballs.
  • In Thief II: The Metal Age, you may come across a button labeled, "Do not push this button." Press it, and two angry giant spiders spawn directly behind you. Were you expecting a prize, genius? Actually a fairly reasonable trap to put someplace where you're expecting a thief. People who live there know better than to touch the button. An unauthorized visitor wouldn't be able to resist.
• Tomb Raider:
  • In the second to last level in Tomb Raider III, after crossing over a pit of fire, there's a Large Med Kit sitting in plain sight in a narrow hallway. Seeing how difficult the game is in general and how rare health kits are (unless you have actively been looking in secret areas for them), most players will happily try to take the item. However, stepping on the tile where the item rests causes a spiked log to roll down from above and crush you if you don't react fast enough. Even if you do avoid it, the trap sits on top of the item, rendering it inaccessible. Likewise, the Coastal Village level is full of baits to lure you to your doom; two areas have large health kits. One triggers a trap and blocks your path while the other health kit is sitting on quicksand. There's also a button to open a door while a second button nearby will set Lara on fire.
  • You know that statue of King Midas in Tomb Raider: Anniversary? The one with one of his hands sitting on the floor? Go ahead, try standing on it. Hey, just how did the legend of King Midas go, again...?
• In Town of Salem:
  • The Veteran can "alert" and kill anyone who visits them that night. One common tactic is "vet baiting", in which the Veteran tries to get people's attention during the day in the hopes of luring the bad guys in. Visiting a baiting Veteran is falling victim to Schmuck Bait, because anyone means anyone, even those who usually can't be killed at night. Of course, the Veteran can also kill their allies...
  • The Jester. If the Jester is lynched, they win and kill one person that voted guilty on them that night. Voting guilty on a suspected Jester is therefore Schmuck Bait. Yes, vote for the guy refusing to give a role and generally being obnoxious. It totally won't get you killed.
• Some of the Tropico games have a Print Money edict you can implement, with Flavor Text telling you to print more money, after doing so drives the price of building too high.

U

• The Ultima series (specifically VI through IX, plus the first Ultima Underworld game) has the Armageddon spell. The beings who give or sell it to you specify that the spell will terminate all life in the current plane of existence. Who would be dumb enough to cast it? Well, there's a reason Sosaria's previous civilization came to a very sudden stop 700,000 years ago...
• In Un Epic, near the very beginning of the game, Daniel finds a massive pile of gold, and the Demon who is trapped inside him, who very much wants him to die so he can escape, encourages Daniel to take it. Doing so quickly drains Daniel's life until he's dead. Though if you die, then avoid it, the demon asks Daniel why he didn't take the gold, in which he implies he learned his lesson from before.
• Until Dawn:
  • While exploring the asylum, Mike can find a severed arm attached to a mechanism that is waving it, with a tag of some kind attached. If you go to take a look at the tag, you find the hard way that it's attached to a bear trap, which ensnares two of Mike's fingers.
  • The ultimate Schmuck Bait, however, comes in the mines. You know how one of the most commonly-cited rules of a horror movie is that you never go alone to investigate a strange noise? Well, a surprising number of players forget that rule when they send Ashley to split from the rest of the group when they hear what sounds like Jessica's voice down another path. Ignoring the fact that Jessica is missing and presumed dead at this point (and, if you screwed up while playing as Mike trying to save her earlier, she may well be dead), it's actually a wendigo imitating Jessica, who proceeds to rip Ashley's head off if she (i.e. the player) falls for one of the most obvious horror movie traps ever. Markiplier's reaction when he fell for it was absolutely priceless.
• Obscure NES title Uninvited has a particular situation where attempting to go down a hole will result in the game warning you about the Giant Spider lurking around down there, and advise you to just leave it be. You can insist. Oddly enough, you do encounter the same spider in the same room if you screw up one of the puzzles: encountering it in this manner gives you the time to use one of your spells to paralyze it for just long enough to sneak past. Of course, you can always turn back afterwards, with a predictable result.

V

• The plot-driving Ankaran Sarcophagus in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, though not for the reason the character is led to believe. You just know there has to be something bad in there, given the Arc Words are "Don't open it!", every even remotely trustworthy character in the game cautions you against it, the only person who wants to open it is your power hungry Bad Boss, and it is heavily implied to contain an immensely powerful vampire capable of bringing about The End of the World as We Know It. In the end, the player gets to decide whether or not to open it. Its contents are a ton of C4, a timer with less than ten seconds on it, and a mocking note from Jack, the tutorial man.
• In Vay, you'll run into an NPC guarding a treasure chest, warning you against opening it. If you give in to your natural RPG instincts and try to open it anyway, the chest will unleash what the Working Designs localization crew affectionately calls the "Gold Vortex", which gobbles up all of your hard-earned gold.

W

• Warcraft:
  • In Warcraft III, Frostmourne is floating above a dais that has an inscription that reads "Whosoever takes up this blade shall wield power eternal. Just as the blade rends flesh, so must power scar the spirit." Arthas decides that it's Worth It — and Trap Is the Only Option to defeat the current enemy.
  • World of Warcraft:
    • Mimiron has his higher level of difficulty activated by pressing a gigantic red button labeled "DO NOT PUSH THIS BUTTON". Fiery death ensues if you have pressed this button unprepared.
      Mimiron: Now why would you go and do something like that? Didn't you see the sign that said "DO NOT PUSH THIS BUTTON!"? How will we finish testing with the self-destruct mechanism active?
    • A Rogue class quest makes you go to the clan's secret base; the stated objective is "Survive the trial". When you find the secret entrance and wander through the cave, there's a lonely treasure chest that looks normal... but if you click on it, a much higher-level elite enemy will come and kill you with one strike. The trick? You must not click the chest, but calmly go through the cave. It's even lampshaded by the NPC you return the quest too: "Couldn't keep your hands away from the chest, could you? Don't worry, almost no one can."
    • Players in Battlegrounds will often set up some schmuck bait with the following "/e has reported you AFK. Type /afk to clear this status." Typing /afk marks you as "Away from Keyboard", and if you're in a Battleground, it removes you. The results of this with Munchkins are predictable.
    • Another battleground prank is for a mage to open a portal, and say to click on it to help summon free food and water. And everyone who isn't paying attention gets dumped out to a city and given a "deserter" debuff that prevents them from rejoining for 15 minutes. As demonstrated.
    • During the Legion expansion, the developers announced a brand new treasure hunt that would unlock a secret prize for the entire WOW public. A small community of players, hoping to unlock the hippogriph mount, found the orb keys hidden in a random place in the ocean, found a secret map hiding in plain sight being used as a beer mat, and figured out how to activate every single orb key scattered across Azeroth. Unfortunately, the secret prize turned out to be a world-eating titan that now threatened the game world. Yay.
• Wick has an in-game version of itself where the player is blindfolded and led into a forest with nothing but candles and matches and must survive until 6 am. Cue the ghost children.
• In the preview trailer for WildStar, Buck, the Human Spellslinger Explorer, finds a huge derelict robot and curiously reaches for an exposed wire... with unfortunate results.
  Buck: ...Had to go and touch it...
• Wizardry:
  • The first game's dungeon contains a dead end passage four squares long. In the first three squares, you receive these messages (the fourth square holds a pit trap):
  A dungeon is dark...
  When it's not lit...
  Watch out, or you'll...
  • Near the end of the fourth game, Werdna can encounter a miniature black hole with something pulsating inside, and has the option of putting his hand inside. If you choose not to, the game tells you "Good idea! You could have lost a hand that way!" and rewards you with an item you need to get the Golden Ending.
• The World Ends with You: Neku best summarizes it when Beat explains that if he sees a button, he has to press it after being asked why he didn't think about it:
  Neku: I think they design traps with people like you in mind...

Y

• In Yomawari: Lost in the Dark, the player will find a syringe and the main character, Yuzu, will note a strange urge to stab something with it. If Yuzu is grabbed by a Giant Hands of Doom spirit while examining the syringe and chooses to stab something, she will stab out the eye in its palm, freeing her from its grasp. If you choose to stab something without the spirit grasping her, then she will stab herself with it, leading to an instant game over.
• You Have to Win the Game has this; one room has a sign telling you it's a bad idea to go left. It's not kidding, as doing so takes you to the beginning of a previous, very difficult room.
• The first Ys game features a room in one dungeon in which a lone treasure chest is surrounded by several statues that look remarkably like enemies you encountered earlier. Guess what happens when you open the chest? However, you really do need what's in the chest.

Z

• The original Zork had a hint book in which the last chapter listed a number of things the player might try doing in the game. More than a few of them will result in the player's death, including desecrating dead bodies in Hades, burning a black prayer book, and waving a magic scepter while standing on a rainbow that the scepter made solid.

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