Blue Eye Samurai. In "A Fixed Number of Paths", Mizu gets an invitation to tea from Heiji Shindo, the same man who hired the Four Fangs to kill her. Taigen repeatedly says they're walking into a trap, but Shindo really is waiting with a tetsubin of tea, because he's decided to resolve this via negotiation; first an exorbitant bribe, then if this is refused, an offer to smuggle Mizu inside the island fortress of Abijah Fowler hidden inside a sake barrel. Taigen argues this is also a trap because Mizu will be helpless inside the barrel. Unfortunately, it's an An Offer You Can't Refuse backed by a Rain of Arrows.
Perhaps the most potent distillation of Schmuck Bait was the History Eraser button from the episode "Space Madness". Ren tells Stimpy to guard said button, and tells him that something incredibly bad may or may not happen if someone were to press the buttonnote Ren: I guess we'll never know!, so he must under absolutely no circumstances touch it. Ren leaves, and the annoying narrator promptly enters the scene with the following:
Narrator: Oh, how long can trusty Cadet Stimpy hold out? How can he possibly resist the diabolical urge to push the button that could erase his very existence? Will his tortured mind give in to its uncontrollable desires? Can he withstand the temptation to push the button that, even now, beckons him ever closer? Will he succumb to the maddening urge to eradicate history? At the mere!push! of a single!button! The beau-ti-ful shiny button! The jol-ly candy-like button! Will he hold out, folks? Can he hold out? Stimpy: ... NO I CAN'T!!!(screech)(woop woop!) Narrator: Tune in next week as—(zap!)
That the narrator repeatedly shoves Stimpy's face into the button (with his butt at one point) surely didn't help.
"Don't Whizz on the Electric Fence!"
In the Ben 10 episode "Tourist Trap", IT looks like a harmless, gigantic ball of rubber bands, despite the build-up to IT appearing, and the numerous warning signs surrounding it. Thinking someone's pulled a fast one on them, Ben decides to have his own brand of fun with IT, and his normally-more-sensible cousin Gwen doesn't even try to stop him. This releases the Monster of the Week to wreak havoc, simply because that's how the freakin' thing amuses itself. The conclusion of the episode implies that after the creature has been released, gone on a rampage, duplicated itself, rampaged more, fought Ben, continued to cause destruction, nearly killed people, and, oh yeah, more rampaging, until it's finally captured... Absolutely nothing about how this thing was contained will be changed. Everything will be fine, the mayor insists, "so long as people mind the signs." At least this time the creatures are put inside a giant lightbulb, where the crazed little suckers are easily visible.
Scooby-Doo fans know of his own Pandora's Box, the Chest of Demons. Shaggy and Scooby have enough experience with real and fake ghosts to know that they were being snookered.
Subverted in a segment from Garfield: His 9 Lives where a young girl and a cat live in a Utopia of a garden. The garden also contains a box which they are warned they must never ever open. After a moment of temptation, they never ever open the box and live happily ever after. This is based on a book of stories on Garfield's previous (and one future) lives, in which the same thing happens.
In an episode, Garfield is trapped in a Haunted House and finds a rope hanging from the ceiling with a sign that says "DO NOT PULL ROPE." Naturally, he pulls on it and is dropped through a trap door. "There's your lesson for today, kids. When it says 'Don't Pull The Rope,' don't pull the rope."
In another episode he sees a door with a sign: "Beware of the SPLUT!". He opens it and gets a Pie in the Face. *SPLUT*. Later on he has been sent to Samoa and sees a similar door with "Beware of the GORSH!". He opens it. Turns out that gorsh is the Samoan equivalent to splut.
In yet another episode, Binky gives him a present labeled "Warning: Splut Enclosed". He had apparently known what it was, but forgot, so he opened the present and was promptly splutted.
A Halloween special has the Super-Fun-Happy-Slide lever near the top of a staircase in Burns' vampire mansion. Having just run up the stairs to escape the vampires in the basement, Bart even lampshades the fact that it's Schmuck Bait: "I know I probably shouldn't, but when am I gonna come back here?"
"What is your fascination with my forbidden closet of mystery?"
Daddy's soul doughnut, Do not eat. Homer being Homer of course eats it ("Mmm... forbidden doughnut.") Made even worse by the fact that it was Homer himself who placed the sign.
Actually referred to by name in "The Great Simpsina" by the son of a rival magician who tricks Lisa into revealing her mentor's secret of the milk can escape trick.
Bart joins the Junior Campers and has learned how to make traps...
Peter is in a bland room with a button accompanied by a sign warning not to push the button. He pushes it. An old kung fu master, wearing a traditional martial arts outfit, walks into the room, bows politely, and floors Peter with a single kick.
Upon staring at a lever labelled DO NOT PULL on an airplane door, Peter proceeds to do so, decompresses the entire plane and falls to his death giggling.
When offered a free boat, or the contents of a box, Peter opts for the box because anything could be inside it, even a boat like they wanted!
In El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera, Manny and Frida find a chest covered in warning signs with a skull shaped lock. They declare "It's like an us trap" and consider that it might be a test before immediately disregarding their concerns and crack it open. Unlike most cases of this trope bad things don't immediately happen when the Artifact of Doom is unleashed. It's only when they trick Manny's mom into putting it on to resume her abandoned superhero identity that things get out of control.
In My Little Pony: Twinkle Wish Adventure, the mayor gives Cheerilee the box containing Twinkle Wish, the sleeping wishing star, and warns her that it must not be opened until the next day at sunset (because Twinkle Wish is asleep and waking her early won't give her enough power to grant wishes), and even tells her "The fate of the entire festival is in your hands." Quite naturally, the box ends up opened mere minutes later, and Twinkle Wish is snatched away by a passing dragon.
Free ACME Bird Seed. OTOH, it's subverted each time since the Coyote is the schmuck, rather than the Road Runner. Also, it's very likely that whenever the Road Runner sees free bird seed lying around, he knows it's another trap, but he also knows it will fail, so he enjoys his free food anyway.
In "Design for Leaving", Daffy Duck is a salesman who converts Elmer Fudd's house into a computerized push-button house. One of the buttons is a red one that Daffy tells him never to press ("Not the wed wone!"). Eventually, after Elmer gets frustrated and throws Daffy out (with the help of a "push-button salesman ejector"), he caves in to his curiosity and pushes the red button. It's an "In Case of Tidal Wave" button that raises the house up on a gigantic hydraulic pillar. Daffy comes by in a helicopter, offering to sell Elmer a little blue button that'll get him down.
In "Hare Remover", Elmer tried to capture a rabbit to use as a test subject for a formula. He decided to use a Box-and-Stick Trap. The trick was so old Bugs commented having heard about them from his grandfather and not believing (until then) he'd see one himself. He deliberately fell for it so whoever bothered setting it wouldn't feel disappointed.
In "Daffy Doodles," Daffy is a vandal drawing mustaches on all the billboards. Porky is a police officer setting an ambush posing as a framed portrait. Daffy sets a box reading "Do not open till Xmas" in front of Porky. Curiosity gets the better of him so he opens it. Daffy's hand comes out and draws a mustache on Porky.
The Loud House: In "April Fools Rules", one of the pranks Luan sets up are signs leading out of the house into town reading "Kitchen This Way". Lincoln is smart enough not to fall for it, but Leni obeys it, sending her far away.
In Batman: The Brave and the Bold, a button in the Batmobile dispenses sleeping gas onto whoever presses it. Joker naturally presses it, despite being warned against it. He does it again later.
On Jimmy Two-Shoes, Jimmy, while flying a plane, notices a big button with a skull on it. Lucius and Molotov dare him to press it. He does, causing the plane to go haywire.
In Rocko's Modern Life when Rocko's boss is on leave leaving Rocko in charge of the comic book store, he tells him not to touch the green button on his office chair. Rocko develops the urge to press the button which he did. It starts out as a massage later transforming Rocko into an evil boss.
The Eliminators from The Fairly Oddparents TV movie Wishology pull several surprise attacks on Timmy, who's said to be the Chosen One, by posing as his friends and family after capturing them, which includes posing as his parents to convince him to come downstairs, disguising as Trixie and manipulating Timmy into a kiss, and finally, Timmy's best friends, Chester and A.J., who convince both Timmy & Mark Chang to take cover.
Avatar: The Last Airbender: In "The Firebending Masters", Zuko lacks Aang's knowledge that when faced with a glowing egg sitting on a pedestal in an abandoned city, the smart thing to do is not touch it. Because of this, they wind up glued to a ceiling.
Aang:[to Zuko] You had to pick up the glowing egg, didn't you...?
Dexter's Laboratory, "Trick or Treehouse": Dexter sneaks into Dee-Dee's treehouse and finds nothing but a lever and a sign saying "Do not pull." He lampshades this ("Who does she think she is with this lever, me?") before pulling the lever and promptly gets trapped in a breadbox.
George of the Jungle: Tom Slick once saw a detour sign telling him to go through a tunnel. As he noticed Baron Otto Matic's henchman with a can of paint, Tom assumed he should take the route blocked by the sign, but found a rock blocking that path.
In the Season 4 episode "Mrs. Puff, You're Fired", Mrs. Puff is fired and replaced by a drill sergeant. After going over the "no eating" rule, he offers bon-bons. Most of the class (including Spongebob) were quiet enough to resist, but one student eats one and is thrown through the wall.
At the cheapskate convention contest (in "Kracked Krabs" of Season 7), a video shows Mr. Krabs putting out a sign for free Krabby Patties. Everyone comes in but is charged for every footstep.
In the same episode, another crab is shown ringing up a bag of chips three times. The reason is three times more flavor equals three times the cost.
Regular Show: "In the name of all that is holy, don't connect the red wire to the blue wire. Thanks."
In an episode of Pinky and the Brain parodying Around the World in Eighty Days, the pair are in rural Italy. Pinky's guide on local customs around the world has an important chapter on various wacky facial expressions and peculiar gestures that rural Italians find incredibly offensive. After Pinky demonstrates them to Brain, Brain winds up accidentally performing every literally single offending expression and gesture as he attempts to communicate to the villagers, resulting in hilarity and pitchforks ensuing.
The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack: Pretty much the entire plot of "Mind the Store, Don't Look in the Drawer", where Flapjack is trusted by Doctor Barber to watch over his shop and is warned not to open a drawer. The drawer contains Doctor Barber's mother.
Mr. Bogus: A literal example of bait happens in the third act of the episode "Battle Action Bogus", where Bogus uses this as part of a trap to dispatch both Ratty and Mole.
In the episode of The Real Ghostbusters "Knock, Knock", a group of excavators working under the city come across a door with a demonic face on it that warns them, "Do not open until doomsday!" Guess what they do? (This is lampshaded at the end when the heroes manage to close it after a rather dangerous battle, and Venkman says, "That was fun, can we do it again?" When the door repeats its warning, he quickly adds, "Just kidding!")
The Transformers: In the season 2 episode "Prime Target", Lord Chumley places a multitude of traps in his compound to ensnare Optimus Prime. There is a weeping woman that appears to be chained to a large heavy block. Prime isn't fooled for a second. The two Triplechangers, Blitzwing and Astrotrain, follow, and observe the scene, with Astrotrain wondering why Optimus Prime didn't save her. Blitzwing tells the woman to stop crying and stomps at her (or the block), which immediately snares him and coats him with a green liquid that hardens into an impenetrable crystalline coating. note It's unclear whether Blitzwing was actually taken in by the trap and trying to save the woman—which is HIGHLY uncharacteristic for a Decepticon—or whether he was simply trying to stomp on the woman (which turned out to be an illusion).
Optimus Prime: Amazing. A booby trap that actually catches boobies.
Wander over Yonder: Subverted in "The Hero". Brad Starlight insists on taking the long and dangerous route through King Drakor's Labyrinth of Delusion because the bright and cheerful-looking shortcut is such an obvious trap, but it turns out to be perfectly safe (though Brad only discovers this after getting horribly injured).
In Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, whenever Bloo sees a door that says "Do Not Open", he can never resist staying away. It doesn't help that everyone drives him nuts by refusing to tell him what is behind the door.
Futurama: The box in "The Farnsworth Parabox". Lampshaded by Farnsworth, who muses how enticing the box is because he told them not to open it.
Tangled: The Series: "The Way of The Willow" has Queen Arianna receive from her sister a Mogwai-like creature known as an Uumlaut; cute, cuddly yet with only one simple rule that it must have its rattle at all times. It goes just about as well as you would expect.
In Tom and Jerry cartoon "Quiet Please!", Tom corners Jerry, who writes out his last will and testament and gives it to Tom, who notices that Jerry is leaving Tom his sole earthly possession: "One custard pie? Let me have it!" Jerry does.
The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald: In "Birthday World", the McDonaldland gang try to flee from Professor Pinchworm after he's de-aged them into toddlers. At one point, Baby Hamburglar is duped into leading the others into a trap because of a sign that depicts Pinchworm pointing in the direction of the trap and reads "Ronald and Friends Hide Here".
Subverted in Freakazoid!. The creepy villain Jeepers has a magic watch that turns beavers into solid gold. When he appears and asks if Freakazoid wants to see something "Strange and mystical," Freakazoid makes it very clear he does not.
Freakazoid: NOOOOOOO! GET OUTTA HERE WITH THAT WATCH! LAY OFF THE POOR BEAVERS, WILL YA?! SHEEEEESH! YOU'RE A CREEP! GO AWAY, WE WERE ALL HAVING A GOOD TIME UNTIL YOU SHOWED UP, JEEPERS! UGGGGGGH! GO HAVE SOME COFFEE, WITH CREAM, OR SOMETHING! BECAUSE I'LL TELL YOU SOMETHING! THIS IS A HAPPY PLACE!
In the last act of The Little Rascals short "Rascals' Revenge", Butch and Woim enter the shed despite being told to stay out. They enter the makeshift spaceship and are locked inside, as the Rascals lead them to believe that they're being sent to the moon.
Adventure Time: One episode begins with Finn and Jake encountering an arena occupied by a shrivelled corpse who invites them inside. The two immediately piece together that this is a trap which, if fallen for, would require them to fight gladiator style against many opponents. They decided to go for it anyway.
Finn: Man, that trap sounds so dumb... ... and flippin' AWESOME!
He gets the hat.