History SchmuckBait / VIDEOGAMES

** Occurs in gameplay as well. 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.

* In ''Dust an Elysian Tale'', half-crazed sidequest giver Reed, continuously warns you not to open "the box" and ''Bumbling Sidekick'' Fidget does so anyway.

-->[[ProtonJon Does doing drugs actually do this? I-- I'm gonna need to check this, 'cause if I took a hit of acid and suddenly saw the Burger King on fire singing "What is Love," I'd be amazed.]]

* ''VideoGame/DragonAge: Origins''

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'': So you've just reached Pulse, now you can finally go anywhere you want! Hey, look at those gigantic tortoise-things! Surely they give massive CP! No need to worry, we just defeated a [[PhysicalGod Fal'ce]], we're Badass enough to handle this thing... [[spoiler: No, no you're not. HaveANiceDeath. Though they really DO give massive amounts of CP, and drop some amazing items, but by the time you're ready to fight them, you'll probably have maxed everyone's Crystarium anyway. [[GameBreaker Unless you use Vanille's Death spell...]] Mind you, it only has a 1% base chance of hitting, +1% per inflicted Debuff.]]

** Though ghost people of the aforementioned add on Dead Money operate using this trope, which many characters have pointed out. They leave out a bunch of seeming innocuous items, like food and bullets, both of which you will desperately need. These are only the bait for several traps, many of which are often hyper lethal. Sometimes even the traps are trap themselves, as you can often salvage ammo or weapons from them. One example is a rigged shot gun that has a hidden land mine near it, so that when you salvage ammo from the gun the mine goes off. Another is very lethal trap the shoots a shotgun into a cluster of fire extinguishers (which explode), after disarming this trap you may find out that one of the fire extinguishers is actually a Gas bomb, a type of mine rigged to proximity detonate.

* The ''VideoGame/{{Ultima}}'' series (specifically VI through IX) 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...

** Also, "This is the safest room in the game, only Q can kill you."

* The aliens in the game ''[[http://www.stfj.net/art/2009/loselose/ Lose/Lose]]'' each represent a random file on the user's computer. Your ship represents the [=Lose/Lose=] executable. When a given alien is killed in-game, that file is deleted. When you die, [=Lose/Lose=] is deleted. The game's high score list contains scores in the thousands. And yes, this game really does delete random files from your computer, so consider yourself warned. It's such powerful schmuck bait that Symantec started [[http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/osxloosemaque-it-s-not-just-game-anymore detecting it as a Trojan]]. According to the creator, it explores what it means to kill in a video game, how valuable data is to us compared to real possessions, and the implications of trusting important information to technology that is growing increasingly difficult to understand. TrueArt, in other words.

** Clever Heavies can use their [[SatiatingSandwich 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.

* In ''VideoGame/DeusExHumanRevolution'' [[spoiler:at one point your augmentations start glitching and Pritchard relays the news that it's happened all over the world and thus there is a massive recall of augmentation biochips, and that augs are advised to have them replaced. Now, by this point you are fully aware that you're fighting against TheIlluminati, an organization of tremendous power that sees augmentation as a potential threat to its dominance. One of its members is the CEO of one of the biggest augmentation companies in the world (''who goes on TV to urge people to get the replacement'') and they have kidnapped several leading augmentation scientists. You were previously in said company's HQ and if you happened to read some emails scattered about, you know that the biochip was in production ''before'' the "glitch" was discovered and everyone at the company thinks there's something fishy about it. Even the game's ''opening cutscene'' had TheOmniscientCouncilOfVagueness discussing a "recall" and the "clinics" with ''the BigBad of the original VideoGame/DeusEx''. When you put all of this together, ''the entire augmented population in the world'' suddenly having to replace their hardware sounds ''mighty'' suspicious. Sure enough, the biochip includes a killswitch and if you had it installed, the aforementioned CEO [[BroughtDownToNormal disables your augmentations]] [[OhCrap right before a boss fight]].]]

* The very short InteractiveFiction game ''VideoGame/PickUpThePhoneBoothAndDie'' is one of the purest examples of Schmuck Bait ever created. And yes, if you pick up the phone booth, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin you die]]. (There is a way to win, by the way.) There is also the frozen pole in the IF game ''So Far''. For any GenreSavvy player, the invitation to [[TongueOnTheFlagpole lick the pole]] is Schmuck Bait. But the game triple-dog-dares you to lick it anyway...

* The original ''VideoGame/{{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 would 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. In all fairness the {{Infocom}} hint books (this happened in all of them) clearly labelled these sections as "amusing things to try (after you've beaten the game)".

* In ''TheNeverhood'', 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...