Simmons: [I] also took the liberty of setting up a mine field near Red base.
Grif: But you didn't even bury them.
Simmons: From what I can tell, they're designed to rest above the ground.
Grif: Uhh, with blinking red warning lights?
Simmons: Yeah, it doesn't really make any sense.
Grif: But you didn't even bury them.
Simmons: From what I can tell, they're designed to rest above the ground.
Grif: Uhh, with blinking red warning lights?
Simmons: Yeah, it doesn't really make any sense.
One of the basic aspects of a trap is to hide it so that whoever activates it doesn't know it's there until after setting it off. However, in fiction, traps tend to be obvious. Mines are a frequent example since, while in real life merely the knowledge of a minefield being present can deter attackers and waste their time (and indeed is usually their main purpose rather than strictly killing), in fiction, they seem to have evolved to warn anything that could set them off of danger (and thus, where exactly they are to avoid or disarm them), like how poisonous plants and animals will signal how dangerous they are via color, while still treated like they are stealthily hidden bombs.
This trope is an Acceptable Break from Reality in video games, as it gives the player a fair chance at responding to/avoiding the trap instead of taking damage/dying to something they couldn't foresee. Any games that lack this trope tend to risk becoming an element of frustration for the player. Some games may leave players with no choice but to get caught in the trap in order to progress; this is usually Played for Laughs.
This trope isn't the same thing as Schmuck Bait. While they can be used together, Schmuck Bait refers to the trap's bait, not the trap itself. Schmuck Bait can be combined with a trap that's incredibly well hidden. For example, a large gemstone out in the open that will drop a hidden anvil on anyone who takes it is not this trope, it is this trope if the anvil is also out in the open, and/or the triggering mechanism is visibly attached to the gemstone.
An occasional justification for this is when a trap is designed to be highly visible to someone who sets the traps but not what it targets, for example, a trap with brightly colored warnings that is meant to catch blind targets. An occasional subversion is where the visible trap is meant to get an opponent to move towards a far better hidden one.
Setting one off often requires the victim to have Failed a Spot Check, carry an Idiot Ball or be stupid in general. Compare Big Red Button. Incredibly Obvious Bug and Highly Visible Ninja are related tropes. If heroes spot the trap in advance, and deliberately decide to trigger it if it's the best (or only) way forward, that's Trap Is the Only Option.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- After War Gundam X: A celebratory parade held by the Space Revolutionary Army is cut short by one of the vehicles involved running over a landmine placed in the middle of the road by the rebels from Satelicon. Even not accounting for Seidel ignoring Tiffa's warning of oncoming danger, said landmine was above ground and completely undisguised with the slow-moving APC leading the parade somehow not noticing it during its approach.
Film — Live-Action
- Home Alone 2: Lost in New York: Subverted when Harry and Marv confront Kevin in the house he's booby-trapped. When he taunts them from the second floor to try the stairs, Marv is all for it, but Harry remembers what happened last year and baits Kevin into throwing paint cans on strings at them too soon. After both cans miss, the crooks charge...only for Kevin to reveal a large iron bar he had in reserve, knocking them both off the stairs and sending them flying into the basement. Then he cuts the bar loose to drop it on them.
- Predator (1987): Subverted at the climax, when the Jungle Hunter has Dutch cornered in a shallow ditch. Dutch shouts at the Hunter to Bring It and kill him, but the Hunter immediately notices a branch with sharpened points laid over the ditch, intended to spike his back if he crawls underneath. He steps out and over it instead... and unfortunately for him, gives Dutch a second to spring the REAL trap, a massive rope-hung log that falls and crushes the Jungle Hunter.
Literature
- Puddle Lane: In The Wideawake Mice Find a New Home, the mouse Uncle Maximus is tempted by the smell of cheese on a mouse trap, and one of his family quickly warn him that it is a trap. Unfortunately, as Uncle Maximus jumps away, the trap then snaps, and catches the end of Uncle Maximus's tail.
- Usborne Puzzle Adventures: In "The haunted tower", one puzzle is a door barred by a very complicated mechanism, with a handle which must be turned the correct direction or the clearly visible spiky iron ball will fall on you. You figure out the right direction by following the gears.
- The Witches: The Grand High Witch’s plan to kill all the children of England is to turn them all into mice, so that they will be caught in mouse traps. However, when the hero is turned into a mouse, he becomes a sentient mouse who recognises a mouse trap, which was not part of the Grand High Witch’s plan.
Live-Action TV
- The Borrowers: At the very beginning of the second series, the six-inch tall Arrietty wanders over to a mouse trap, and is about to take the cheese, when her father Pod suddenly yells "STOP!!". He gravely tells her that the bar would cut her in two, and that she has a lot to learn before she can go off on her own. He then notices that it is his wife's favourite cheese; he very carefully removes it from the trap himself, and presents it to the family when they return home.
- Doctor Who: In "Pyramids of Mars", Sutekh has his minions going through a deadly Osirian puzzle course. He sees through the misdirections and stratagems employed by his brother, dismissing them as childish tricks to fool lesser minds. He shows them how to solve the puzzles easily and reach the final room without incident. The Doctor and Sarah find the puzzles slightly more troublesome, but still manage to avoid an obvious trap, reasoning that the most devious race in the galaxy would never place a door handle in a prison.
- Fraggle Rock: In "Scared Silly", Boober scares Wembley to test his baloobius (the fluffy end of a Fraggle's tail, which flares when a Fraggle is scared). Seeking revenge, Wembley rigs Boober's room with masks and plastic snakes to jump out at him, as well as a basket of pebbles to fall on his head. The traps have highly visible pieces of string rigged up all over the room. When Boober comes in, he notices them right away and deliberately sets them off.
Boober: Oh, brother. Wembley, Wembley, Wembley, these are The Oldest Tricks in the Book. [sighs, then begins setting off the traps]
First the snakes. [the snakes fly out of his cupboard]
Then the pebbles on the head. [the pebbles fall, missing Boober]
Mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm. Then the masks. [the masks pop up]
And I'll bet you he's even put fake spiders in my bed.
[turns the covers back, revealing fake spiders]
Yep. What'd I say? - Friends: In "The One Where Phoebe Runs", Chandler is moving into Monica's apartment.
Chandler: OK, I'm officially unpacked. Thanks for helping me, man. [Turns around and sees that Joey isn't there.] Joe? [Hears giggling coming from a box] Well, I guess Joey went home. Oh, and look, there's still one box that I have to unpack. [Hears the giggling again]
Joey: [jumps out of the box] I gotcha!!
Chandler: [pretending] Oh, my God! You-almost-gave-me-a-heart-attack.
Joey: Boy, it was so hard not to laugh, I tell ya. - Power Rangers Ninja Steel: In "The Ranger Ribbon", the Rangers fight Trapsaw, a monster who claims to be a Trap Master (though his booby-traps backfire on him more often than not). Trapsaw always paints a large X on the ground where his trap is set. Oddly, nobody ever notices the X’s.
Tabletop Games
- In the 1983 Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set contained a sample dungeon with a ludicrously obvious trap: a chest sitting in the room with a giant log supported by a rope positioned to swing down on anyone opening the chest. The flaw in the trap is that nothing's connected to the chest — the only way to activate the trap is to deliberately cut the rope.
- Warhammer 40K: Only the Tyranids have this be the case. Their Spore Mines float, are constantly moving, which draws attention, glow green and when they are homing in on something, they become even brighter. The Tyranids also use Spore Mines as an explosive drone equivalent and they are much more effective at this.
Video Games
- 102 Dalmatians: Puppies to the Rescue: In the Royal Museum, LePelt builds a trap out of a sarcophagus to capture Oddball and Domino in. The puppies are able to tell right away when they find it while pointing out that even if they did fell for it that there is a hole in the side big enough for them to slip though. Upon pointing this out, the puppies jump into the sarcophagus to get LePelt to fall into his own trap.
- In BioShock, Proximity Mines will glow bright red when armed.
- Breath of Fire IV: Kyria has a series of traps designed to repel intruders, including a heavy weight tied to a post in the middle of an open area. Fall for that particular trap and an amused villager will tell you "Not even the animals are dumb enough to fall for that one!"
- Chrono Trigger: In Ozzie's Fort, as some sort of last-ditch effort before he has to actually fight you, Ozzie's set up a very conspicuous treasure chest under a guillotine that he's very clearly operating nearby. If you try to ignore it, he'll try to call you out on your lack of curiosity and insist it's probably full of goodies... only for one of his minions to notice it and promptly run into the trap.
- Laser Tripbombs in Duke Nukem 3D have an orange beam showing the line that will cause the bomb to explode. They get renamed to Trip Mines in Duke Nukem Forever.
- Dungeon Keeper:
- The first game normally has traps hidden from their opponent, with the main exception of the boulder trap which is visible. In case of a multiplayer game, opponents can even see the outline of this boulder trap when it's placed but not yet delivered.
- The second game introduces the fear trap, which needs to be obvious because it scares enemies that get too close.
- In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Dwemer traps and their triggers tend to stand out from the surrounding environment. However, this is justified because the intended victims of said traps were the Falmer, which are completely blind.
- The Evil Within has traps liberally scattered throughout nearly every place you traverse in the form of bomb tripwires, proximity mines, bear traps, spring-loaded spikes, pipes that spew acidic liquid, etc. Sometimes they're very well-hidden, sometimes they're just sitting out in the open, sometimes they trip themselves before you approach as a Jump Scare, and sometimes they seem blatantly set and ready to spring on you at any moment, but never actually do. It makes for a very tense and nerve-wracking experience overall, and definitely discourages the player from blindly rushing into any new areas. The proximity mines play it straightest by flashing and beeping for a few seconds just before going boom, giving you time to quickly duck and avoid their sensor to disarm them.
- Final Fantasy XIV: During the Stormblood expansion, you and the Scions are attempting to find a monastery and, while searching for clues for its location, you come across a Magitek device that is quite obviously a trap. Since you've already looked around elsewhere in the location, you have to trigger the device. Sure enough, Garlean soldiers pop up and surround you. Thancred lampshades this accordingly:
Thancred: All right, which one of you triggered the obvious trap!?
- For the King: In dungeons, not only can traps be seen in advance, they take up a room to themselves, just like a combat encounter. They're unavoidable, so the only question is whether the team will try to bypass the trap one-by-one or someone will try to disarm it.
- Tripmines in Half-Life have a light blue beam showing the laser trigger.
- Halo: Trip Mines
are bright orange and beep constantly. There's also the Landmines in Forge mode that have blinking red lights on them.
- Helldivers II: Mines used by the Terminids and Automatons are very obvious. Terminid mines glow bright yellow, in contrast to the bare dirt brown that Terminids tend to turn their hives into, while Automaton mines have large glowing red lights on them. Super Earth's own mines are slightly less conspicuous, but this is to a Helldiver's disadvantage, the AI doesn't bother avoiding mines anyway so the less visible mines mean that Helldivers tend to die to their own mines more often than enemy ones.
- Neverwinter Nights: In the "Shadows of Undrentide" campaign, the Player Character has to raid a kobold lair while investigating the theft of some artefacts from their mentor's home. One room of the lair appears almost empty except for an open cage with a treasure chest, with a series of arrows leading to it. If the player opens the chest, all they find is a scrawled note calling them stupid... the cage then shuts on them and the kobolds spring an ambush on them.
- Rise of the Triad has plenty of traps active at the start of various levels. Firejets, spinblades and stabbers, are all visible and noisy, some of which also move along routes. There are firechutes, which mostly serve as a means of making it difficult to cross some areas over a long range by launching fireballs. Crushing walls are less common, but did appear once.
- Smash TV has plenty of landmines in the arena, which are simply obstacles the player needs to avoid during the heat of battle.
- The player's traps in Sniper Elite are visible to the player, and are often unconcealed. The enemies will run into them as if they were hidden.
- Under Siege, a Flash social media-based Tower Defense game, referred to the various devices used to kill enemies as "traps". Despite that, they weren't hidden at all, and many were incredibly conspicuous, such as giant steam-powered hammers or barrels obviously stuffed with dynamite. Naturally, enemies made no effort to avoid or destroy them.
Web Animation
- Papyrus Finds a Human: Papyrus' first trap for Frisk is a single tiny bear trap in the middle of an open field of snow that could be easily walked around. They use their stick to close it up and walk by without further comment.
- The Land Mines from Halo were lampshaded in a season 11 episode of Red vs. Blue when Simmons uses them to set up a mine field.
Web Video
- Stuart Ashen once reviewed a bunch of Green Lantern (2011) toys. One toy features a character creating an energy construct of a beartrap with a rather short "leash" connecting it to the character. He narrates a possible encounter between the character and the enemy he wants to trap...
Ashens: What weapon does he come with? (rummages in toy's packaging) My goodness! [attaches leash to toy's hand] He's a bit of a sicko, isn't he? It comes with some sort of bear trap! Yeah, it does, actually. [closes jaws on beartrap] Clunk! Lovely! There we are, bite your leg off! [opens jaws] Lovely! Oh well, I guess dinosaurs are going to be a bit vicious. And also a bit stupid, because it's got a lead of, like, one and a half feet. [pulls out another character to walk into the beartrap]
Victim: [Walking up] Tum te tum te tum. [Stops] Oh, there's that bloke trying to get me.
Green Lantern: No, no, keep walking.
Victim: But this thing's obviously connected to you, I can see it a mile off.
Ashens: [tosses toys aside] Should have thought this one through!
Western Animation
- Family Guy: In "Hannah Banana", Chris decides to play a "prank" on Peter by rigging a trap with two giant logs hung from ropes on the ceiling and a sign that says "Put your head between these two restrained logs and win a free hat!" Peter doesn't think there's anything amiss with it and puts his head in the middle, where his head is smashed into a bloody pulp. The next scene shows him with a horrifically crushed head bragging about his new hat.
- Johnny Test: In an episode where Johnny gets split into a good and evil half, Dukey sets up a visible Rube Goldberg Device trap to catch the evil half, with the triggering mechanism being a banana peel that's out in the open. Evil Johnny mocks the trap and steps over it right onto the well hidden pit trap.
- Miraculous Ladybug: In "Queen of the Dreadzone", Chloé Bourgeois hatches a plan to lure Sabrina, Marinette, and Zoe into the school and then capture them in a net and pelt them with tennis balls. Among the multiple reasons why this plan fails is because she lay down a large and conspicuous "X" on the floor where the nets were supposed to land. While the three girls completely miss it the first time, when the trap is delayed, they realize the X is there and move out of the way before the nets hit them.
- Tom and Jerry: In "Dicky Moe". Tom puts a piece of cheese in the open so Jerry approaches it while Tom holds a rope attached to an anvil placed eight above the tempting food; Jerry realizes it's a trap because he sees Tom waiting behind, so he counters the trap by replacing the cheese with a fish for Tom to grab while the anvil falls onto him.