Booby Trap

From Tv Tropes

File:Boobytrap.jpg
Gloval: "It was so obvious! We should have known! A Booby Trap, of course!"
Lisa/Claudia: "Booby Trap, sir?"
Gloval: "Yes, one of the oldest tricks in military history. A retreating enemy leaves behind hidden explosives and such. The aliens who designed the ship left it with an automatic defense system designed to detect and destroy their enemies. The activation of the guns means that unfriendly forces have approached close enough to be a threat to us."
-- Robotech Episode 1: "Booby Trap"


A version of the Death Trap, except instead of the good guys being put into it, they have to somehow get past it to achieve their objective. Such devices will usually gruesomely kill the first Red Shirt sent into it before the hero correctly figures out how to get past. Otherwise, most such traps act in exactly the same way as Death Traps. Explosives are a particular favorite, as they will also destroy the installation involved. Expect a retreating character to trick a pursuer into it.

If you're looking for that other kind of Booby Trap, I suggest you see the Marshmallow Hell page.

Also, please note that while some good guys and definitely the audience knows when and where the Booby Trap is, most characters just don't have these privileges. Unless they feel compelled to do things the "right" way.

Obviously, Truth In Television. Compare and contrast Trick Bomb.


[edit] Examples

[edit] Animation

Megatron: "When expecting Booby Traps, always send the boob in first."

[edit] Fan Works

  • The ladies of the Replica elite from Aeon Natum Engel love these.

[edit] Film

  • Star Trek III: The Search for Spock: Blowing up the Enterprise with the Klingons on board.
  • Blazing Saddles. The citizens of the town of Rock Ridge create a fake Rock Ridge filled with explosives as a giant trap for Hedley Lamaar's army of villains.
  • The Goonies. Several, including a couple examples of the Rube Goldberg Device. Data, in his broken English, calls them "Booty Traps".
  • The Beast of War (1988). The Soviet tank crew leaves one of their own comrades tied to a rock with a grenade under his head. ("If you want anything, just nod.")
  • In Treasure Planet, the entire titular planet is booby trapped.
  • Blown Away centers on an bomb-maker hounding a bomb disposal officer by rigging Booby Trapped bombs. The devices are cruelly ingenious in foreseeing how the bomb squad will work. At several points the camera passes through the scene and into the workings of the bomb in what appears to be a continuous take, striking shots which highlight, almost fetishist the workings of the device.
  • Indiana Jones deals with dozens of these on any given day.
  • Marv sets up a few of these for Kevin in Sin City.
  • In Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, Max's gas tank is rigged to explode should someone attempt to open it up without first disarming the bomb.
  • The Cube is a full booby-trap in itself.
  • In Red Dawn, the Wolverines leave Toni Mason's body behind for the Russians to collect, with a live grenade wedged beneath her body.
  • Part of the appeal of the Home Alone series is during the final segments of the movies, watching Kevin set up some ingeniously nasty traps for Harry and Marv to stumble into. A good number of these traps, particularly in the second movie, would probably kill those who stumbled into them, but Harry and Marv are Iron Butt Monkeys, so apart from getting banged up, neither of them get seriously hurt.

[edit] Literature

  • In Dan Abnett's Warhammer40000 novel The Brothers of the Snake, a squad of Space Marines finds one portion of Dark Eldar defense particularly fierce. Breaking in, they find that the Eldar had left explosives in the phosphorus mines; they lug them off before they can explode.
  • The English Patient is set in areas of World War Two Italy that has been thoroughly Booby Trapped by the retreating Axis. One of the main characters, Kip, is a sapper with the British army; the presence of unexploded bombs and mines is what brings him to the villa where the other protagonists live.
  • Rogue Squadron, when the world they were hiding on was discovered, left a lot of explosive traps for the Imperials. Said Imperials did work their way through all of them, but exactly what they were trying to achieve is up in the air. They didn't need anything that had been left on that world and they knew the Rogues had already left.
  • In Kiss Me, Deadly The Mafia leaves a brand new Ford for Private Detective Mike Hammer as a bribe, with several sticks of dynamite attached to the ignition. Figuring he's smart enough to figure that out, they have a second bomb hidden underneath wired to the odometer. Fortunately Mike has a mechanic check out the car thoroughly. Later when two hitmen take him for a ride, Hammer lets them think he's missed the second bomb; the hitman driving instinctively slams on the brakes, giving Hammer a chance to overpower them both.

[edit] Newspaper Cartoons

  • One of Bill Mauldin's World War II cartoons showed a couple of Germans rigging a disabled tank ... unaware that American troops were already close enough that they could have reached out and touched them. The caption is an American saying, "Dang clever Booby Trap! I kinda hate to disturb 'em..."

[edit] Television

[edit] Video Games

  • Fallout 3 features a wide variety of Booby Traps. Don't be surprised when you:
    • Step on several types of plain ol' fashioned mines (which come in frag, plasma and EMP flavors) which you can disarm and replant yourself.
    • Get hit by a swinging cow chained to a ceiling.
    • Try to use a computer, only to have it explode in your face.
    • Get your leg shattered by a bear trap.
    • Get shot by a trip-wire activated shotgun sitting on a nearby bench.
    • Get grenades hanging from a ceiling dropped on your head.
    • Bump into the exploding baby carriages.
  • Fallout New Vegas takes all of the above and adds Booby Trapped mail boxes. Not many, but the do exist. Also concealed mines which don't glow.
  • In Starcraft, Terran players can set up hidden land mines.
  • In Warcraft III, any side can buy landmines from the goblins and lay them around the place. They turn invisible, so most units won't see them.
  • In The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, many dungeons have booby traps in them. It is pathetically easy to kill the people who set them up with them.
  • In the Stronghold series, players can set up all sorts of traps for their enemies, such as sand-covered pits or cages full of starved wolves that open up when enemies get too close.
  • Pills and armor shards often trigger ambushes in Serious Sam 1.
  • Half-Life has mines which can be set off via their blue/green laser tripwires and sentries which can be set off by nearby red beams.
  • The Timesplitters series has both remote and automated land mines as weapons.
  • Ah, the horrible, horrible things you can do in Dwarf Fortress. From the simple "stone-fall trap" (which, as one would expect, drops a rock on something's head) to sections of hallway loaded with ten giant serrated whirling discs to fully-fledged Death Traps, the game lets you indulge your horrible little imagination endlessly.
  • These are half the "fun" of Theresia, and an excellent reason not to Try Everything. Just after the title sequence, attempting to move a stretcher and see what's behind it makes it fire arrows at you -- and it only gets worse from there.
  • The Prince Of Persia series has lots of traps. Spikes of Doom? Yup. Wall-mounted buzzsaws? Yup. Smashing Hallway Traps of Doom? Yup. Bladed pendulums? Yup. Spinning poles covered in spikes? Yup. The list goes on and on. Frequently combined with Death Course for extra fun.
  • It simply wasn't Tomb Raider without these. Huge rolling boulders, trap doors that gave way, spikes, lava pits...the list goes on and on.
  • Resident Evil had several of these peppered inside the mansion; one room would fill with poison gas if you didn't seal the vents before pressing a button and another room would have the ceiling come down on you if you take the shotgun from the room next door. The underground leading to the laboratory had huge boulders that would start rolling down your path, crushing you instantly if you didn't find a place to duck into. The remake adds a few more traps.
  • Portal 2. The Final Boss of the game demonstrates how even a complete idiot can be Dangerously Genre Savvy -- and subvert Boss Arena Idiocy along the way -- by taking into account the possibility that you might win and placing a trap on the...
Wheatley: (triumphantly) "PART FIVE: BOOBY-TRAP THE STALEMATE BUTTON!"
  • It's possible in Batman: Arkham Asylum to use the Explosive Gel as a booby trap with the right upgrades. It's especially effective when planted at the top of a ladder which results in a flying mook and an instant KO.

[edit] Webcomics

Varsuvius: "I prepared Explosive Runes this morning."


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