History Main / SchmuckBait

* "How 'bout a nice Hawaiian PUNCH?!"

* Pick-a-path books are veritable minefields of Schmuck Bait. Choose the wrong options, and you're hosed.
* ''Literature/ChooseYourOwnAdventure'' as well... the trouble with those though is that often times they [[SubvertedTrope subvert this]] and trick you with options that ''seem'' like obvious Schmuck Bait which turn out fine and options that appear harmless leave you to a horrid fate.

* The "dance remix" of Music/{{Perfume}}'s [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Polyrhythm]] leaves in the song's [[MindScrew bridge.]]

* Another repeated schtick: "Oh god, [[Wrestling/RobVanDam my opponent]] has thrown a chair at me! HA HA, I caught it you dumb *kicks chair into the face*"
* A general rule of thumb: if the resident {{Heel}} is offering to shake your hand, ''don't''.
** Likewise, if Wrestling/StoneColdSteveAustin is offering to shake your hand to seal a truce...you're about to eat a Stunner.
* Using an aerial maneuver against Wrestling/RandyOrton. Try it! You'll be very lucky not to be on the receiving end of the [[FinishingMove RKO]]
* In almost any tag team match between heels and faces, the heel team will do something to get the face outside the ring to come after them. 99% of the time the face falls for it and gets the ref's attention, allowing the bad guys to double team his poor partner.

* Every Website/YouTube video with "ear rape" on title obviously has SensoryAbuse on it. Sometimes, [[SnicketWarningLabel the uploader includes a "Warning!" on the title]].
** Videos with "[[MemeticMutation but everytime he says X]] it gets bass boosted" on title also can count as this.
* Oh, I hope nobody plays this! [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U1o6LEF4jQ]]

* Many [[LetsPlay Let's Plays]] tend to have a message stating "TURN YOUR HEADPHONES VOLUME DOWN" right before a really loud part. Many people INSTEAD turn their headphones volume UP.

* Anything by [[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9ecwl3FTG66jIKA9JRDtmg Siivagunner]] is a Schmuck Bait for those unaware of their high-quality rips.

'''Misha''': Shicchan is holding a 1000-yen note in one hand, Hicchan~! If you guess which one, you can have it If you don't...

* [[http://www.yesbutnobutyes.com/archives/2009/09/the_rape_tunnel.html The Rape Tunnel]], an art installation by Richard Whitehouse. ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: If you enter this tunnel then the artist will attempt to rape you. It's a followup to his other piece, The Punch-You-in-the-Face Tunnel. [[spoiler:They were both [[http://www.miaminewtimes.com/arts/artlurker-explains-rape-tunnel-our-intention-was-to-spark-conversation-6515944 fabricated stories]], and the actual Schmuck Bait was to see who would take the story seriously and how; in this regard, it was [[{{Troll}} successful if not predictable in light of this entire page]].]]

See also BriarPatching, GenreBlindness, TooDumbToLive, IdiotBall, DistressBall, WhatDoesThisButtonDo, PressXToDie, ReversePsychology, WhoWouldBeStupidEnough, TheWindowOrTheStairs, DontTouchItYouIdiot, and TemptingFate. If taking the bait doesn't hurt you, it's a FakeTrap and possibly a ParanoiaGambit. If taking it does something ''good'', it's ViolationOfCommonSense. If that something good is being able to progress, it's StupidityIsTheOnlyOption (TrapIsTheOnlyOption for the non-video game version). If someone fell into a Schmuck Bait one day but understandably didn't noise about it, he may be subject to {{Oblivious Mocker|y}}ies. Not to be mistaken for SnarkBait, ClickbaitGag
or for something that actually [[YiddishAsASecondLanguage baits your schmuck]].[[labelnote:Explanation]]"Schmuck" is Yiddish for Penis.[[/labelnote]]

* The old jingle for Chiquita bananas warned consumers that they should never refrigerate bananas because they're a tropical fruit that hails from warm climates. What happens if you do it anyway? [[spoiler:Think about it: What happens when you put ''most'' tropical fruits in the fridge? The skin darkens a bit, but the bananas inside stay fresh for a substantially longer time. The people selling them obviously don't want that, because then you're not running out to buy more as frequently.]]

Making schmuck bait irresistible is a good trick. Often it takes advantage of the inherent appeal of ForbiddenFruit. Or a CuriousAsAMonkey character will ''ensure'' it gets taken. Often in spite of [[DontTouchItYouIdiot warning cries]] from other characters. It can [[TrickedToDeath end badly]].

[[GettingCrapPastTheRadar or for]] something that actually [[YiddishAsASecondLanguage baits your schmuck]].[[labelnote:Explanation]]"Schmuck" is Yiddish for Penis.[[/labelnote]]

See also BriarPatching, GenreBlindness, TooDumbToLive, IdiotBall, DistressBall, WhatDoesThisButtonDo, PressXToDie, ReversePsychology, WhoWouldBeStupidEnough, TheWindowOrTheStairs, DontTouchItYouIdiot, and TemptingFate. If taking the bait doesn't hurt you, it's a FakeTrap and possibly a ParanoiaGambit. If taking it does something ''good'', it's ViolationOfCommonSense. If that something good is being able to progress, it's StupidityIsTheOnlyOption (TrapIsTheOnlyOption for the non-video game version). If someone fell into a Schmuck Bait one day but understandably didn't noise about it, he may be subject to {{Oblivious Mocker|y}}ies. Not to be mistaken for SnarkBait, ClickbaitGag,
[[GettingCrapPastTheRadar nor for]] something that actually [[YiddishAsASecondLanguage baits your schmuck]].[[labelnote:Explanation]]"Schmuck" is Yiddish for Penis.[[/labelnote]]

[[GettingCrapPastTheRadar nor for]] something that actually [[YiddishAsASecondLanguage baits your schmuck]].

* In ''[[https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/wyvern-worm-au-fanfic.350536/#post-18395857 Wyvern]]'', Taylor [[spoiler: (who has the alt-power to turn into a wyvern)]] wishes to catch her three bullies in the act, so she takes a very obvious recording device, covered with stickers saying 'YOU ARE BEING RECORDED', to school. She is promptly beaten up and it is stolen from her. There are several things wrong with this plan of action. [[spoiler: One: it's not a recorder. It's just a very, very durable remote microphone. The recorder is in Taylor's back pocket. Two: it has a tracking beacon in it. Taylor can track it with the remote in her back pocket. Three: Sophia Hess stashes it in the same hidey-hole she uses for her illicit gear, which is right behind her locker. Taylor and Danny call the police, and they move the locker. With the PRT present.]]

[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
* In TabletopGame/{{poker}}, massively overbetting with an unbeatable hand sometimes causes people to call you, because "Surely, if he really had a hand, he would bet less so as to get paid."
* ''TabletopGame/{{Munchkin}}'' is guilty of this trope in nine different shades; Space Munchkin's "TRAP! The Most Fiendish Trap of All!!" actively illustrates this with a BigRedButton.
** The Duck of Doom. You should know better than to pick up a duck in a dungeon. (Anything as harmless-looking as a duck is bound to be a HappyFunBall or KillerRabbit if it's in a dungeon...)
* ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering''
** The flavor text for the card Fat Ass from the parody set ''Unhinged'' has the flavor text, "Our lawyers say no matter how funny it would be, we can't encourage players to eat the cards. Hear that? Whatever you do, ''don't'' eat the delicious cards."
** In an official website article, the author makes a point about the nature of Magic's goblins by offering readers several large red buttons to push. Pushing them (sometimes after several pushes) causes the text and graphics to become scrambled. Except the last button. ''That'' one gives a censored preview card for the new expansion.
** Whenever your opponent plays something you've never seen before, it's a normal reaction to grab the card for a second to look at it and figure out what it does...Unhinged made this instinctive act come back to bite the player with [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=74319 Vile Bile.]]
** If your opponent has mana available and cards in hand on your turn, odds are they're waiting for you to play something so they can respond to it somehow. Each color has different ways to respond to different cards, but the biggest example is a Blue player waiting for you to spend all your mana to play a creature so they can either [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=265403 counter]] or [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=265715 return it to your hand]].
* ''TabletopGame/YuGiOh'' card game:
** The illustration of [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Reckless_Greed Reckless Greed]] shows a greedy man reaching for a treasure chest that is clearly over a trapdoor and [[WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes and filled with snakes]].
** Trap Cards in general. Your opponent has a completely monster-free field, and you're packing five monsters with 3000 ATK each, ready to bash their brains out. All they have is one measly face down card in their back row. You take the shot, and suddenly you're hit with some ungodly powerful card that completely [[RocksFallEveryoneDies wipes out your field]], and allows them to special summon their 6000-ATK flagship monster for the endgame attack.
** The Trap Card [[https://yugioh.fandom.com/wiki/Dark_Coffin Dark Coffin]]. If your opponent notices that you're a little too eager to sling around Spell and Trap removal cards, you may walk right into this one.
* ''TabletopGame/MyLittlePonyCollectibleCardGame'': The Problem "[[http://mlpccg.wikia.com/wiki/Fire_When_Ready Fire When Ready]]" has a 5 point bonus to draw people in, but its confront requirements are 5 power '''''from each color'''''. Finally, its effect replaces ''both'' Problems when a character so much as moves or enters play there. It is virtually impossible to confront, but its effect does make it useful.
[[/folder]]

* SchmuckBait/WebComics

* One former Advertising/{{GEICO}} [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWD6EhA1pmY ad campaign]] featured a cartoon guy who brought the full brunt of some {{Obvious Trap}}s onto himself. [--But some of them look too good to resist!--]

* Pick-a-path books are veritable minefields of SchmuckBait. Choose the wrong options, and you're hosed.

[[folder:Card Games]]
* In TabletopGame/{{poker}}, massively overbetting with an unbeatable hand sometimes causes people to call you, because "Surely, if he really had a hand, he would bet less so as to get paid."
* ''TabletopGame/{{Munchkin}}'' is guilty of this trope in nine different shades; Space Munchkin's "TRAP! The Most Fiendish Trap of All!!" actively illustrates this with a BigRedButton.
** The Duck of Doom. You should know better than to pick up a duck in a dungeon. (Anything as harmless-looking as a duck is bound to be a HappyFunBall or KillerRabbit if it's in a dungeon...)
* ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering''
** The flavor text for the card Fat Ass from the parody set ''Unhinged'' has the flavor text, "Our lawyers say no matter how funny it would be, we can't encourage players to eat the cards. Hear that? Whatever you do, ''don't'' eat the delicious cards."
** In an official website article, the author makes a point about the nature of Magic's goblins by offering readers several large red buttons to push. Pushing them (sometimes after several pushes) causes the text and graphics to become scrambled. Except the last button. ''That'' one gives a censored preview card for the new expansion.
** Whenever your opponent plays something you've never seen before, it's a normal reaction to grab the card for a second to look at it and figure out what it does...Unhinged made this instinctive act come back to bite the player with [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=74319 Vile Bile.]]
** If your opponent has mana available and cards in hand on your turn, odds are they're waiting for you to play something so they can respond to it somehow. Each color has different ways to respond to different cards, but the biggest example is a Blue player waiting for you to spend all your mana to play a creature so they can either [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=265403 counter]] or [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=265715 return it to your hand]].
* ''TabletopGame/YuGiOh'' card game:
** The illustration of [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Reckless_Greed Reckless Greed]] shows a greedy man reaching for a treasure chest that is clearly over a trapdoor and [[WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes and filled with snakes]].
** Trap Cards in general. Your opponent has a completely monster-free field, and you're packing five monsters with 3000 ATK each, ready to bash their brains out. All they have is one measly face down card in their back row. You take the shot, and suddenly you're hit with some ungodly powerful card that completely [[RocksFallEveryoneDies wipes out your field]], and allows them to special summon their 6000-ATK flagship monster for the endgame attack.
** The Trap Card [[https://yugioh.fandom.com/wiki/Dark_Coffin Dark Coffin]]. If your opponent notices that you're a little too eager to sling around Spell and Trap removal cards, you may walk right into this one.
* ''TabletopGame/MyLittlePonyCollectibleCardGame'': The Problem "[[http://mlpccg.wikia.com/wiki/Fire_When_Ready Fire When Ready]]" has a 5 point bonus to draw people in, but its confront requirements are 5 power '''''from each color'''''. Finally, its effect replaces ''both'' Problems when a character so much as moves or enters play there. It is virtually impossible to confront, but its effect does make it useful.
[[/folder]]

* ''[[Tabletopgame/YuGiOh Yu-Gi-Oh!]]'' card game:

You would have to be an idiot to go near schmuck bait. Things like the BigRedButton with the dire warning signs; the dark alley in [[ForbiddenZone Vampire Town]]; the [[ChestMonster conspicuously untouched treasure chest]]; [[WaxMuseumMorgue the room full of frighteningly realistic statues]];[[NobodyHereButUsStatues the room full of "statues" that twitch every thirty seconds]]; or [[ScreamerPrank a seemingly innocuous game/video telling you to turn the volume up and/or look very closely at an image...]]

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/schmuck_bait.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:[-You know what they say: Build a better mousetrap...-] ]]

* In a scene from ''Series/SpittingImage'', a retarded UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan (the President's brain is missing) has two identical buttons right next to his bed. One reads "Nurse", the other one reads "Nuke". Guess which one he hits when his brain goes missing.

* Many [[LetsPlay Let's Plays]] tend to have a Message stating "TURN YOUR HEADPHONES VOLUME DOWN" right before a really loud part. Many people INSTEAD turn their headphones volume UP.

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNt4ZHVTqJY This YouTube link]], however, most certainly is not a Rick Roll.
** Nor is [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJPE1Z63JQU this one]]

!!Example subpages!

* ''Fanfic/TheWritingOnTheWall'' has a large, fortified, heavily built structure surrounded by metal spikes with warnings in dozens of languages written inside. Clearly, its builders were very concerned about deterring tomb robbers. [[spoiler: Too bad it isn't a tomb, but a nuclear waste storage facility, and the warnings of danger were all too real.]] The structure in the story has never been built in real life precisely because of worries over it being schmuck bait.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/schmuck_bait.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:[-You know what they say: Build a better mousetrap...-] ]]

%% Save the quotes for the quotes page, please.

!!Don't read these example subpages!

!!Other Examples:

* ''Website/CollegeHumor'' has a video called the "Retard Test". The patient is given this riddle: the red man lives in the red house, the orange man lives in the orange house, and the blue man lives in the blue house. So who lives in the white house? The patient gives "the white man" because of the way the riddle has been phrased. The doctor tells him "Wrong: [[spoiler:the President]] lives in the White House. You're retarded." Not that it matters, until 2017 the correct answer would also be "a black man lives in the White House."

* In the ''WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation'' review for [[http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/6276-DayZ DayZ]], Yahtzee mentions that on one of his 38 attempts (by the end of the video, anyway), he finds a pistol, rifle, and a ton of spare ammo at the top of a stairwell in an abandoned building. While questioning where the guns came from, as well as questioning the broken window and adjacent dead player (portrayed as a corpse with a bullet wound in their forehead) he is [[EpicFail shot dead by a sniper]] ([[BoomHeadshot in the same spot as the aforementioned corpse]]).
-->'''Yahtzee:''' Okay, lesson learned. Never gorp at your inventory screen while standing fully upright next to a window.

* ''Literature/ChooseYourOwnAdventure'' as well... the trouble with those though is that often times they [[SubvertedTrope subvert this]] and trick you with options that ''seem'' like obvious Schmuck Bait which turn out fine and options that appear harmless leave you to a horrid fate. In one book, for example, you need to choose between whether you should run back into a burning building after a friend or escape. If you return then you live and get a relatively happy ending ([[spoiler:complete with rescuing the friend's ancestor from slavery; it's a long story]]). If you escape from the building then you wind up being mistaken for a thief while trying to put out the fire, are publicly humiliated by being forced to wear a sign that says you're a thief, and then get shot and killed for inadvertently sitting and resting on the steps of a bank (which the police think you're looting).

* SchmuckBait/{{Gamebooks}}