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  1. Games
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The 25 most insidious booby traps (and their victims' last moments)

Features
By Lucas Sullivan published 10 April 2013

If you see it, you're already dead

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16. Rigged baby carriage (Fallout 3)

Awwwww, dont cry, little buddy! Where are your parents? Goochie goochie goo--huh. Youre made of metal, and there are live frag mines where your adorable arms and legs should be. Looks like my life as a crib thief ends in hilarious iro--PAKOW!

15. Delicious Fruit (I Wanna Be The Guy)

Isaac Newton seemed just fine after an apple bonked him on the head. So youd think that these large, cherry-looking red fruits would be equally harmless. Youd be wrong--because touching a single errant pixel of these deathtraps will make your body explode into a cascade of bloody giblets. They also have this nasty habit of defying gravity and sailing straight into you when you foolishly try to jump over them.

14. Pressure plate battering ram (The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim)

Phew, finally found the path to the next room in this dunge--WHAM. Getting plastered by a battering ram doesnt work like it does on Looney Tunes--you basically just got hit by metal-headed tree trunk with the impact of a batters swing. Lydia doesnt know whether to laugh or cry at your misfortune.

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  • Hollow Knight: Silksong The 25 best Metroidvania games you can play in 2026

13. Sumo cat dolls (Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time)

This inventive death trap is one of a kind--literally, because youll only see one throughout the course of this enjoyable stealth platformer. Its not enough to have your body smash between two weighty, steam-powered sumo physiques. No--turns out, those fake bellies also have an electric charge coursing through them, so your shattered frame will feel quite a jolt as you painfully depart your furry mortal coil.

12. Kombat Tomb ceiling spikes (Mortal Kombat II)

Why is it that, when we uppercutted Baraka skyward a dozen times, those ceilings were nowhere in sight?! How did we manage to assume a lying down position mere moments after we took a haymaker straight to the chin?!

11. Pendulum trap (Saw)

You know that scene in Goldfinger, where the eponymous villain expects James Bond to die? You know how Bond was about to be bisected by a laser that starts at the crotch and works its way up? Now imagine that the laser was replaced by a sharpened, rusty gear that was ever-so-slowly lowering towards your genitals. Yeah--its enough to make your nads shrink just thinking about it.

10. Noxious Trap (League of Legends)

That lil yordle Teemo is quite the crafty one. Anyone who thinks theyre stepping on a harmless mushroom has another thing coming--that thing being a cloud of corrosive poison that envelops your entire body, suffocating and burning you all at the same time. As your lungs disintegrate into a mucus-y slime, you see him. Teemo, in the brush. Smiling at you.

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9. Grinders (Orcs Must Die!)

As you can see, it sucks as it cuts! Well, it does more of a vacuuming in of hapless orcs between two spiked, spinning columns, obliterating their skeletal structure in the blink of an eye. We shudder to imagine the green hamburger meat that sprays out the other side.

8. Electrified floors (Metal Gear Solid)

Have you ever done a pelvic thrust into an electrical socket? We imagine that sensation--whatever it may be--is akin to what Solid Snake experiences when crawling on an electrified floor. The first tingle might feel nice; the severe electrocution that follows assuredly does not.

7. Ceiling trap (Resident Evil)

The scariest part of this deadly room isnt the continuously descending ceiling, the doors that lock immediately upon entry, or the threat of being flattened into a pancake mix of blood and bone. No--the horror happens when you actually manage to escape the room, and your buddy Barry jokes that You were almost a Jill Sandwich! Ugh.

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Lucas Sullivan is the former US Managing Editor of GamesRadar+. Lucas spent seven years working for GR, starting as an Associate Editor in 2012 before climbing the ranks. He left us in 2019 to pursue a career path on the other side of the fence, joining 2K Games as a Global Content Manager. Lucas doesn't get to write about games like Borderlands and Mafia anymore, but he does get to help make and market them. 

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