Honey Trap

You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.

—Old saying (also not true)

The Mole sent to gain the trust of a specific person... horizontally. Usually female, sometimes even a heroic Fake Defector, the uniting thread is that there is one target and this one target is to be seduced. The others might be suspicious or even hostile, but that's incidental.

Might be a spy who wears a night dress.

In Real Life, this is also a term for a grifter's scam wherein a sexy woman approaches a wealthy married man and gets him into a compromising position (ideally, in bed, though in some cases just in a passionate embrace), while her partner secretly takes pictures. Then the pictures are sent to the man with a demand for money; no money, and the wife gets sent copies of everything. This is the classic form; there are plenty of variations, but they all rely on using sex as bait to get someone to do something unwise, then making them regret it. This can also be done with an Armored Closet Gay if it would ruin his career, he's married, or lives in a time or place where homosexuality is illegal.

A variation of this can be seen in Japan, where a female scammer frames up a random guy in the subway for doing The Chikan, and asks for a lot of money in exchange for not telling the cops.

It has also been used in espionage, where the trapper gains secrets from the trappee. While the Mata Hari archetype is well-known, men can take this role as well, such as the "Romeo" agents of the East German Stasi during the Cold War, sent to seduce the secretaries of West German ministers.

Also the name of special computers made to appear as a desirable targets (typically governments or large corporations); used by cybercrime investigators for trapping playful hackers and crackers to learn their techniques – although these are more often known as "honey pots".

One of The Oldest Tricks in The Book.

Examples of Honey Trap include:

Anime and Manga

  • Kaworu Nagisa, the seventeenth angel in Neon Genesis Evangelion. Although they never quite did it in either, he seemed a little more effective in the anime than in the manga; in both, being forced to kill him set off the series' biggest Heroic BSOD.
  • Johan from Monster uses Roberto as one of these at least once, which is... interesting. To a lesser degree, Johan acts as one himself while disguised as his sister Anna.
  • In Darker than Black, Shihoko acted as one of these against Huang as part of her backstory.
    • Not-so-Innocent Fanservice Girl Brita worked her way into the American embassy to spy for the EPR by sleeping with an official, too.
  • One faction in the seventh episode of the original Bubblegum Crisis OVA sets up a Dirty Old Man scientist with this type of trap. This group and the Knight Sabers, who were hired to protect the scientist, carry out their plans with various types of Room Disservice and a fake ambulance after a faked heart attack.
  • Kei Amemiya in Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade. She's a former terrorist turned police informer, who poses as the sister of an adolescent suicide bomber encountered by the protagonist Fuse. Her controllers (the Public Security Division) intend to create a fake scandal to give them the excuse to disband Fuse's Special Unit, which has become a political embarrassment.
  • Melissa Mao plays one early in Full Metal Panic! Sigma to capture a rogue Mithril agent.
  • As par for course, Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei subverts this by introducing anime-obsessed fanboys who are so thoroughly engrossed in their love for all things 2D that they are, in fact, immune to the 3D allure of a honey trap.
  • In Weiss Kreuz, Yohji Kudou's role in Weiss frequently involves striking up a relationship with a female target in order to get information, especially in sequel series Weiss Kreuz Gluhen. Unfortunately for Yohji, he's very bad at keeping himself from getting emotionally involved, leading to a breakdown and near-Face Heel Turn toward the end of Gluhen.
  • Saki Miyajima in Durarara!!!!, who does this to get her boyfriend Kida back, following Izaya's intructions to do so.
  • Mari Minami from the Vampire Princess Miyu manga, who seduced/befriended boys so her Shinma father could feed on their blood.
  • Used in Wicked City, where the Dirty Old Man working with Makie and Renzaburou is set up and almost killed by a beautiful prostitute who's actually a demon. It was a part of said old man's Plan, tho.
    • At the very beginning, Renzaburou had a very detailed (and hot) sex scene with a Tall, Dark and Bishoujo woman. It quickly became Fan Disservice when she turned out to be not just a Dark Action Girl sent to kill him... but a demon. More exactly, a spider woman with Vagina Dentata and all. Renzaburou barely escapes with his life and she swears revenge, becoming a major antagonist in the movie.
  • Tomoe Yukishiro from Rurouni Kenshin, who took up the role to avenge her fiancé Akira Kiyosato, whom Kenshin killed. Too bad she ends up falling for him instead.
  • In Rosario + Vampire, a slug monster blackmails Kurumu into dating her with some photos he took of her. This works because Kurumu is noted to be very, very innocent, shy and chaste—as far as succubi go.
  • The title character of Zero Zero Nine One, Mylene Hoffmann aka 009-1, is the rare protagonist version (and might have been built with this specific purpose in mind). The fact that Mylene has machine guns built into her breasts means that she can defend herself even if the target finds out and tries to turn the tables on her while she's naked and theoretically unarmed.
  • Ribbons Almark from Mobile Suit Gundam 00 may be the very rare Ho Yay version. In any way, he did pretend to care for his boss Alejandro Corner, playing on the other man's obvious trust and affection (and possible romantic/sexual feelings) for him... only to betray him in the very last moment. FUCKING RIBBONS, instead.
  • In Wild Rock, the lakeside clan is getting all the wild game thanks to Emba, leaving the eastern forest clan hard up for food. Since Yuuen is useless at hunting, his father figures that if Yuuen pretends to be a women he can convince Emba to give them some of the game he kills. Yuuen quickly feels guilty about the deception, but then it turns out he was doing a really poor job and Emba knew all along.
  • Spy of Darkness: This is Q-section's primary method of operation. This being a Hentai, it seems that their mission statement includes bedding all of their targets prior to arresting/assassinating/interrogating them.
  • Rina Mamiya from Higurashi helps her lover Teppei Hojou to swindle rich men off their money via having Rina seduce them, then start a chain of blackmailing and extortion. When they target a certain Mr. Ryuugu to steal one million yen from him, though, Ryuugu's teenage daughter Rena decides to protect her father and herself from Rina's charms. Bloodily, if needed.
  • Gunslinger Girl. This was Alessandro "Sandro" Rissi's job before he became a cyborg handler. As a result his colleagues tend to assume he's a Handsome Lech.
  • Yumi Horikoshi from Detective Conan did this, threatening her ex-boyfriend Kazushi Nakanishi with sending R-rated photos of themselves (taken in the past) to his new girlfriend. And Kazushi got so pissed that he killed her.
    • Also, Akiko Sayama from the "Night Baron Virus" case. She invited Asshole Victim Ebara to her and her boyfriend's hotel room, spiked his drink, dressed him up as the Night Baron and threw him off the balcony.
  • Genderflipped examples: the Amazon Trio from Sailor Moon. In either continuity they were in, they would first try to seduce or befriend their soon-to-be victims; when their targets rejected their advances, the Trio member at work would reveal himself as a villain and whip out the Mind Rape to try peeking into their victims's dreams.


Comic Books

  • Shira Brie from the Star Wars Expanded Universe.
  • The Black Widow originally got her start as an Iron Man villain, sent by the Soviets to seduce him in order to learn his secrets.
  • Daredevil has been on both sides of this fence with Typhoid Mary. First, she was sent by Kingpin to seduce and later kill him, and would have done so except her "good" personality fell for him legitimately. Later, Matt got closer to her good side and had sex with her, then had the cops take her away before she woke up in the morning.
  • Blue Eyes from Sin City is a hired assassin that is used in this manner, although it seems that she could have been a more standard shoot-and-kill assassin but apparently really likes sex.


Fan Works

  • Elya in A Young Girl's Delinquency Record fornicates with a character named Joe quite a bit and gets him to talk during the afterglow of sex. Doing this was Elya's idea, and not one she put forward reluctantly.

Captain Strong: Still mixing business with pleasure, Lieutenant?
Elya: Imperial efficiency at work, Captain!

Films -- Live-Action

  • Munich contains the line "beware the local Honey Trap" when the team is in London. The above comment is initially spoken as a joke by a married member of the Israeli team who turns her down not realising it's literally true -- the woman is a female assassin setting them up for murder.
  • North by Northwest contains one who is also a Double Agent.
  • Jude (Miranda Richardson) is an IRA honeytrap in The Crying Game.
  • The movie Traffic contains a homosexual Honey Trap as part of an elaborate drug scheme.
  • Claire in Enigma.
  • Roxanne in Good Burger.
  • Lexy used this on Sam in Adulthood.
  • Elizabeth Swan in Pirates of the Caribbean, where she thanks and kisses Jack Sparrow for coming back to save them. As they near a mast, she deliberately chains him; this is because the Kraken is after Jack only, so she decides that Jack be trapped and eaten instead of the entire crew.
  • The seemingly sweet and innocent female lead turned out to be this in the Plot Twist for the film Derailed
  • The martian who dresses as a woman to get into the White House in Mars Attacks!.
  • The Film/James Bond franchise has had a few of these, including Bond doing it himself on a couple of occasions.
    • The most notable example is From Russia with Love, where the aim of SPECTRE is to kill Bond and embarrass MI6.
    • While Tatiana in the above example drove the plot of the movie, Xenia in GoldenEye, as she is actually seen killing a man during sex so that her collaborators could steal his ID.
      • Xenia also tries to do the same to James Bond himself later on, and he almost falls for it, if not for the fact that when she slaps her thighs around him toward the end of the scene, it seems to knock some sense - And the fact he had seen the dead man Xenia killed previously in the exact same fashion - into Bond.
  • The killer in Basic Instinct arguably does this.
  • Used repeatedly in The Good Shepherd. By nearly every woman in the entire movie!
  • The Siege (1998). CIA agent Elise Kraft is asked by her Arab informer whether she's sleeping with him as part of this trope. She jokes that she had to get special permission from her superiors first.
  • Bordello of Blood is a movie about a brothel, run by female vampires who eat their clients.
  • In the little known 2006 film The Insurgents, a group of disillusioned Americans prepare to detonate a truck bomb in order to spark a revolution. In need of a driver for the truck, they set the one female of the group as the Honey Trap. The guy they find later turns out to have been a Honey Trap himself, sent by a government agency to infiltrate the group.
  • Implementing a Honey Trap is the point of one of the Farm's tests in The Recruit.
  • The killer in The Temp.
  • This is part of O'Ren's backstory in Kill Bill. Noticeably, it happened when she was eleven... because O-Ren used herself as a HT, since the killer of her parents was not just a Yakuza lord but a pedophile.
  • Mae Monroe in The Specialist acts as a honeytrap while seeking revenge for the murder of her parents.
  • The title character in Foxy Brown uses this trick on more than one occasion.
  • Ali uses this on Bobby in Bully.
  • Berlin in The Life of David Gale.
  • Jennifer in Jennifer's Body.
  • Sil in Species.
  • Escape to Athena (1979): The headquarters of La Résistance is in the local whorehouse, with the girls being used for collecting secrets, and taking Germans prisoner when it's time to liberate the town.
  • Dr. Ilsa Schneider from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Notable in that she honey trapped both of the Joneses.
    • She was only partly sucessful in the case of the elder Dr. Jones, in that he slept with her, but did not (as he pointed out to his son) trust her. Indy, OTOH, fell for it hook, line, and sinker.
  • Used repeatedly in Cruel Intentions.
  • The Assignment. An American naval officer trained to become a Doppelganger of terrorist Carlos the Jackal finds that his assignment involves sleeping with Carlos' ex-girlfriend. As he's married he's rather disturbed by this, whereupon Donald Sutherland's CIA character quips: "Don't think of it as cheating on your wife; think of it as fucking for your flag."
  • In The Film of the Book Clear and Present Danger, Felix Cortex, head of "Security and Intelligence" for Columbian drug lord Ernesto Escobedo, takes up the Honey Trap role himself in order to get information from Moira Wolfson, who is the personal secretary of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Literature

  • Getting Even by George Hayduke (it's a multi-volume work, so it might be volume two or three), describes the following (this is from memory so it's slightly paraphrased):

Get a good looking girl, and an equally together guy who can pass for a girl with some help. Have the two seduce the target, and take both of them back to his room. The real girl should distract the guy, while the other "girl" removes "her" skirt and panties. At some point after this, you should rush into the room with a camera. Alternatively, you can set up an infrared camera, to take pictures without him finding out.

  • Parodied in the Discworld novel Making Money, when the middle-aged Pucci Lavish tries it on Moist von Lipwig. She is overweight, rather dim, and dresses in a manner that might be attractive on a woman one third her size (provided that said woman was a particular stunner to begin with), After running like hell, Moist concludes that it would have to be a very strange jury that believed he'd be attracted to her.
  • In Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Diao Chan was dispatched by her adoptive father to sow mistrust between Dong Zhuo and his right hand man/adopted son, Lu Bu. It might have been the Ur Example if prostitution and espionage hadn't claimed the titles of the world's oldest and second-oldest professions respectively.
  • Lale's mission in The Assassins of Tamurin
  • The John le Carré spy book/film adaptation The Little Drummer Girl is about a woman recruited by Mossad to act as a honey trap for a terrorist. In the film's coda we see another terrorist have his throat cut by a male Mossad agent who's in bed with him.
  • In Le Carré's Smiley's People, Otto Leipzig does this to Oleg Kirov, who, to use Connie Sachs' phrase, "walked in with his eyes wide shut."
  • In Lust, Caution, a Chinese university student working for a Nationalist resistance cell during WW 2 is instructed to seduce a high-ranking member of the pro-Japanese occupation government in order to enable his assassination.
  • In Money With Menaces by Frederick Forsyth, a clerk at an insurance company is blackmailed by exactly this scheme. He ends up not having to pay the blackmail. When a policeman interviews him (and by direct reference, many other men who got caught in the same scheme) about it, the policeman tells him not to worry about it, because somehow the blackmailers got themselves blown up when they opened a package of supposed money. After the policeman leaves, the clerk glances over to a picture of him as a Corporal and his Captain, who were bomb disposal experts during WWII.
  • Jacky in the Bloody Jack series is forced to be one of these during the Napoleonic wars as an alternative to being hanged for piracy. She manages to escape with her virginity miraculously intact.
  • Jacqueline from The Day of the Jackal, a girlfriend of a late OAS member, starts a relationship with a high-ranking French official to gain information that helps the Jackal.
  • In Don Emanuels Nether parts, the eponymous character is 'enlightened' enough to take all the village whores for a medical check up every month and supplies antibiotics to those that don't pass (in an era before AIDS). When the village is attacked and one of the whores has syphillis she is sent to infiltrate the officer class. Who suddenly find a pressing need to return to the capital with it's military clinics. The 'fighting over the girl' part only happens once the entire group finds each other in the clinic waiting room.
  • In one Lord Darcy story, a female spy tries it with the main character. Works both ways, with him mainly feeding her misinformation - and taking his time with it.
  • The John Grisham novel The Firm plays this trope straight with the main character.
  • The John Grisham novel The Brethren has the homosexual blackmail version; three small-time scammers accidentally hook a man the CIA is vetting to become a Presidential candidate.
  • Happens in several books by John Ringo. Notably in 'Cally's War'.
  • In Cryptonomicon, Lawrence Waterhouse, while monitoring radio signals in Qwghlm, believes his host's maid is a honey trap.
    • And she is.

von Hackelheber: I learned, through some of our agents in the British Isles, that a man matching the general description of Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse had been stationed to a castle in Outer Qwghlm. I was able to arrange for a young lady to place this man under the closest possible surveillance. His security precautions were impeccable, and so we learned nothing directly. In fact, it is quite likely that he knew that the young woman in question was an agent, and so took added precautions.

"Then, shortly after the parley, before he has time to forget all about her, we will send a messenger to him, under a flag of truce, accusing him of stealing the girl and demanding her return. He may kill the messenger, but at least he will think that she has escaped.
 "Then we will send a spy -- a Yuetishi fisherman will do -- to the kozak camp, who will tell Conan that Octavia is hiding on Xapur. If I know my man, he will go straight to that place."
"But we do not know that he will go alone," Jehungir argued.
"Does a man take a band of warriors with him, when going to a rendezvous with a woman he desires?" retorted Ghaznavi.

  • In the Clive Cussler novel Vixen 03, a senator tries to blackmail Congresswoman Loren Smith with some photos he had taken of a hot date she had with Dirk Pitt. Unfortunately, he offended the photographer, who told the story to Dirk. Dirk's response was to tell the senator that unless he destroyed the negatives and dropped the issue, Dirk would introduce the photographer to his father - Senator Pitt, head of the Senate Ethics Committee. Since the career damage to the senator of being caught red-handed in attempted blackmail was far greater than the damage he could inflict on Loren by exposing that an unmarried Congresswoman is having a consensual sexual relationship with an unmarried man who is well above the age of consent, he folds.
  • Older Than Feudalism: The Bible has Delilah, who is supposed to find out the secret of Samson's strength so the Phillistines can defeat him.
  • Beryl Garcia-Stapleton is forced into this by her husband Jack Stapleton in the Sherlock Holmes story Hound Of The Baskervilles, by posing as his sister and seducing Sir Henry Baskerville. He also tricked the disinherited and desperate Laura Lyons into writing the letter that would leave Henry's old uncle Sir Charles indefense enough to succumb to Stapleton's lethal plans.
  • Gender inversion in the Gor series: Male slaves to trap free women into slavery.
  • In Dune, Jessica Atreides was conceived this way, since her mother who was actually Gaius Helen Mohiam was sent to seduce Baron Harkonnen as part of the Bene Gesserit's Super Breeding Program, but instead Harkonnen viciously raped her. She got her revenge by both becoming pregnant anyway, eventually leading her to her granddaughter Alia being the one who offs the Baron himself, and infecting him with a nasty STD.
  • Subverted in the second Sten book: Imperial Intelligence trained Sten to expect this when a beautiful, classy young woman came on to him without any effort on his part -- but this particular girl genuinely did just want sex ... verging on romance.


Live-Action TV

  • Saffron from Firefly, for her own ends.
  • The Bill featured several storylines about women acting as honeytraps including a gang of prostitutes who lured wealthy businessmen to hotel rooms before drugging them and stealing their money and laptop and a gangsters girlfriend who picked up men in nightclubs who she and her girlfriends then robbed
  • The honeytrap trick is used many times in 24, most memorably by Mandy
  • Cracker episodes To Say I Love You and True Romance both have female murderers who use sex to entrap their victims
  • Karen in Shameless once gave a soldier a blowjob to distract him while the others snuck Ian out of the protected area. It Makes Sense in Context.
  • Devonne from The Wire
  • Coronation Street. Jez Quigley trapped Steve Mc Donald by getting a pretty girl to flirt with him and lead him to an empty car park
  • In Alias Sydney's mother Laura/Irina Derevko was an elaborate trap set up by the Russians to gain info on Project Christmas.
  • Emmerdale. When the Dingles wanted revenge on Scott Windsor they got stripper Chastity Dingle to lure him to an empty building with the promise of sex where they kidnapped him
  • Stacey Monroe from Hustle frequently acts as honey trap during con tricks
    • Also, her replacement, Emma Kennedy, from season 5 onwards.
  • On Leverage, this role is usually filled by the Ambiguously Brown Sophie. Though occasionally Parker does this role, although she isn't as effective and Hates Being Touched.
    • Leverage also featured an episode where they faked a nonexistent Honey Trap to claim that a Senate seat was going to be vacant.
  • Both sides use these in Hogan's Heroes, although given the show's rating it's only limited (onscreen, at least) to makeout sessions. Hogan himself could be considered a male honey trap, given his tendency to seduce even the women of the Gestapo. It's also used by Fraulein Richter on Frau Linkmeyer's fiancee, to discredit him and make it look like he was having an affair before the wedding.
  • Battlestar Galactica Reimagined. Caprica Six uses this to get into Baltar's head (and, er, other parts) to steal the codes for the defence network, enabling the Cylons to wipe out the Twelve Colonies. She regrets it.
    • Gina Inviere seems to have been doing this with Admiral Cain. Then she was found out. And found herself the prisoner of her mark. On a ship full of survivors of a genocidal massacre perpetrated by her side. She was in for a predictably unpleasant time.
  • A variation of this in Eastenders where Billy meets his future wife (called honey) after meeting her in a honey trap to check if somebody's husband is faithful. Honey got confused and mistook Billy for the person she was meant to be checking on so plenty of misunderstanding there.
  • Various villains in Buffy the Vampire Slayer use the honeytrap trick. Darla being a notable example.
  • In the Lost episode "The Economist," Sayid and Elsa both play Honey Trap for each other. It doesn't work out for either of them, but they do seem to enjoy themselves along the way.
    • Later on in "He's Our You", Sayid falls victim to this at the hands of Ilana the bounty hunter.
  • Farscape: Chiana is always flirting with some guy to provide a distraction for the team or get important information. Surprisingly, Sikozu also pulls one in the same trilogy, getting one of the space station employees to trust her so she can get into the system and assist in their escape.
  • On Gilligan's Island, Ginger was sometimes a PG-rated version of this when Mr. Howell was being a Jerkass, using her to coerce Gilligan with her charms to pry information out of him or getting him to agree to something. It worked on at least one occasion, but on another, it didn't because the Skipper interrupted her attempt and told Gilligan to stop listening; he did, and the Skipper told Ginger, "You can go tell Mr. Howell it didn't work!"
  • In an early episode of Wiseguy, OCB undercover agent Vinnie Terranova finds that the mistress of a mobster is actually an undercover policewoman who lampshades the Double Standard involved. "If I were a man I'd be regarded as some kind of James Bond." In the "Counterfeit Yen" arc, an intelligence official who's been hung out to dry by his fellow conspirators orders an escort girl to cheer himself up. He forms a relationship with her over time, and she tells him of a publisher she knows who's willing to offer money to tell his side of the story. It turns out the "publisher" and the girl are both KGB agents who offer him asylum in the Soviet Union. Faced with disgrace and imprisonment in the United States, or exile as a traitor behind the Iron Curtain, he decides to Take a Third Option and shoot himself.
  • The Professionals ("The Female Factor"). A young prostitute is used to seduce a politician so he can be blackmailed into passing secrets to the KGB.
  • In the Australian mini-series Scales of Justice a notorious crime boss arranges for one of his escort girls to become the secretary of a (married) politician who is campaigning against him. The two have an affair, and it's revealed that photographs were taken of the event. The crime boss doesn't bother sending the photos to the politican; he simply walks past him with the girl on his arm. The series ends on the politician's shocked expression.
  • In Doctors, an old friend of Julia's asked her to try to seduce her fiancé to prove he was loyal. Unfortunately, Julia got the wrong man.
  • The Fixer. Rose Chamberlain was thrown out of the police for trying this tactic, which was deemed "entrapment". She continues to use it to gather information for the protagonists in the series.
  • In the Canadian series Intelligence, the Vancouver Organized Crime Unit routinely uses escorts from a local agency for the espionage version of this. One of the subplots involves an escort eventually becoming an important source of information on a huge corporate conspiracy the man she seduced is involved in.
  • In Chris Ryans Strike Back, a female medical NCO seduces John Porter, an SAS man who has been reactivated to help in the rescue of a journalist. It's revealed to him that she works for Section 20, the section of the Secret Intelligence Service he is working with, in a "honey trap" role. Layla, another Section 20 officer, states that they felt Porter was suffering from "self-esteem issues" including "sexual inadequacy". Basically, he needed to have sex.
  • Sue from Glee did this to Principal Figgins in order to get her job back.
  • Through flashbacks, we find out in The Big Bang Theory that Leonard's very short-term Asian girlfriend Joyce Kim was actually a North Korean spy trying to get more info about Leonard's government work.
  • On Heroes, Noah (while still a Company agent) sends Elle Bishop to seduce Gabriel Gray/Sylar to encourage the development of his powers.
  • One episode of Starsky and Hutch involved a dance studio whose employees were seducing and then blackmailing wealthy married clients. Hutch reversed the trap, going undercover as a client and sleeping with one of the blackmailers to get them to incriminate themselves.
  • Pretty much a staple of Soap Operas.
  • The Thin Blue Line episode "Honey Trap" was about Inspector Fowler and Detective Inspector Grim recruiting Constable Habib to catch a criminal via a honey trap. The criminal arrested her.
  • Mentioned by name in Life On Mars.
  • In The Palace, Princess Eleanor gets her secretary, Simon, to seduce the king's secretary, Abigail, in order to learn what the king is hiding.
  • One of these appears in a 1000 Ways to Die case, seducing the political candidate that was The Rival to her boss and then siccing the press on him. She dies when she develops a fatal allergy that causes her a brain aneurysm through... sneezing too strongly.

Theater

  • The compromising-position-plus-photograph type happens to Stone in City of Angels.


Videogames

  • EVA in Metal Gear Solid 3 was a shameless homage to the Honey Trap Bond girl. For both sides (Snake and Volgin). Naomi also dabbles in this, but more as a freelancer.
  • Made use of in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Having gotten hold of a porn studio, Tommy attempts to ensnare governor's wife Martha Shrub (hur hur, get it?) into a photographed tete-a-tete with actress Candi Suxx. He gets the governor instead.
  • Zhores in Absolute Obedience is a rare male example. The whole reason for meeting him is one of his former victims wanting to get revenge.
  • Commander Shepard is the honey trap for Morinth in Samara's loyalty mission.
  • Sonia Reed from Fire Emblem Elibe.
  • In StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, Tosh refers to Ariel Hanson as bait and/or a trap several times. On the one hand, he's psychic, so he ought to know—but on the other hand, he's also quite possibly violently psychotic (and Hanson is the one who tells you he might be violently psychotic—it's complicated). The jury's still out on what exactly the truth is/was.


Webcomics

  • Monica from Sluggy Freelance acts as Riff's girlfriend in order to get information for Chilus's cult. Oddly, her ability to keep Riff ensnared seems to be based not so much on sex appeal as "acting like a random nutcase."
  • Though it was (hopefully) without any actual sex, recent revelations in Gunnerkrigg Court have shown that Antimony's mother Surma acted as this to Reynard to lure him into the Court to "contain" him. It worked, but at least one person wound up dead and Surma left the Court with Anthony Carver, severing their contact with their friends Anya and Donald Donlan and Surma's then boyfriend James Eglamore.
  • In Ow, My Sanity, a junior Delta Green agent tried to gather information on David by having his crush seduce him. He turned her down, saying she was either lying or too Tsundere for his liking.
  • In the Tales Of Gnosis College Jill Keeney accepts a mission of this sort with the aim of overthrowing a Latin American dictator.


Web Originals


Western Animation

  • Used and explicated in an episode of Archer—of course, it's one of Archer's favorite operations. Which is why it's a rude shock when his mom sets him up for a honey trap with a male agent (a Cuban operative who would hate to have word of his gayness get back to the rather homophobic Castro) in order to retrieve sensitive info.
    • And Archer, being Archer, gets upset when the Cuban turns down his vulgar come-ons. "'Not my type'? I'm EVERYONE'S type!"


Real Life

  • Mata Hari
  • In the 50's, the KGB wanted to gather blackmail material on Indonesian president Ahmed Sukarno. They had a group of young women pose as stewardesses on his flight, then take him back to his hotel room for an orgy. When the KGB showed Sukarno the film, he thanked them for a lovely night and asked for a copy of the film to take home with him.
  • Murder victim Bobby Kent went out with his "friends"/killers because he was promised sex with one of them.
  • Luring gay men down to Africa and then blackmailing them (because homosexuality is very illegal in most countries) is a common form of romance fraud.
  • Honey traps were one of the most common missions for female Ninja, or kunoichi. They would be sent to seduce an important target, and either interrogate him via pillow talk, use the threat of revealing the thing to blackmail him, or assassinate him during or after the deed. Kunoichi were trained, like all ninja, in the creation and use of a wide variety of drugs and poisons, and many were trained in the use of a special kind of concealed dagger,[1] making them deadly assassins even when naked.
  • Similarly, in ancient China, beautiful women were often sent as peace offerings—even if they didn't act as spies, they often did at the very least distract their targets from their usual duties and inspire jealousy among the other men (and women) of the court. (It's why The Thirty-Six Stratagems advises the utility of such women.)
  • Apparently there were some cases where beautiful women were sent as tribute/ransom. Said women having been infected with STDs. Guess what happened next...
  • The first sex scandal in the history of the US government: a man set his wife to seduce Alexander Hamilton, and then pretended to be outraged and threatened to go to the newspapers in order to extort money.
  • Bait cars (cars set by the police as traps for car thieves) are often called "honeypots". Unprotected computers that are attached to the internet to serve as bait for malicious hackers are known as honeypots too.
  • Katrina Leung worked as a double agent for China and the FBI. She seduced several FBI employees including her FBI handler which got her information of use to China
  • Cheryl Bentov, aka Cindy, an American Mossad agent, seduced a former Israeli nuclear technician who had disclosed Israeli nuclear secrets by posing as an American tourist, becoming his lover and persuading him to go to Italy with her, where he was kidnapped and smuggled to Israel.
  • In 2006 a British Defense Attache in Pakistan was brought back to the UK after it emerged a girlfriend/lover of his was a Pakistani Intelligence Officer. There are sources which say his actions compromised Western operatives and operations in Pakistan but the British government deny this.
  • A North Korean woman Wong Jeong-Hwa was imprisoned in 2008 after she admitted seducing South Korean military officers in exchange for classified information.
  • A US diplomat was photographed in a "compromising situation" with a female Polish in 1961 and was blackmailed into revealing secrets.
  • In 1987 a US Marine Sergent embassy guard in Moscow called Clayton J. Lonetree was convicted of spying against the United States for handing over documents he was assigned to after being honeytrapped and blackmailed by a female Soviet Officer.
  • Anna Chapman, who pled guilty to acting as a agent for a foreign government, has been described in the media as a "modern day Mata Hari" and a "honeytrap" for obtaining a British passport by marrying a British man and allegedly having affairs with prominent businessmen. Never say this in Northern England, though, as it will only get people angry and insulted, considering how much of a cult figure she is there. Needless to say, she is (for now) legally unable to enter the United Kingdom.
  • Similarly alleged Russian spy Katja Zatuliveter, who worked as a researcher for the BBC and a politicians PA, has been labeled a honeytrap and "blonde temptress" by the UK press who strongly imply the MP in question hired her out of lust and didn't do the proper background checks.
  • During the Cold War, British Secretary of State for War John Profumo was accused of putting national security at risk by having a sexual relationship with alleged call girl Christine Keeler, who was reputed to also be sleeping with Eugene Ivanov a senior Naval Attache at the Soviet Embassy in London.
  • MI5 sent out a 14 page document to British banks, businesses and financial institutions warning about a danger Chinese intelligence services blackmailing Western businesspeople over sexual relationships.
  • Russian model Ekaterina Gerasimova was allegedly employed by Kremlin to seduce at least half a dozen of their high profile critics to destroy their reputations and for blackmail purposes.
  • An aide of former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had his Blackberry stolen by a woman who picked him up in a nightclub.
  • When a lawsuit couldn't be delivered to Mick Jagger, an attractive young woman was sent to ask to see him backstage. Strangely enough, he let her in and got served.
  • Another British MP Ian Clement admitted he was seduced by a woman in Beijing he suspects of working for Chinese intelligence.
  • A 16 year old British girl was convicted of murder for leading her boyfriend to a block of flats where she knew a group of teenage boys were waiting to attack him.
  • In 2010 two Icelandic women living in London admitted conspiracy to rob by acting as a honey traps for a violent criminal gang. The judge apparently fell for their charms too as he let them walk free despite at least one of the men who was robbed being beaten and threatened with a gun.
  • Spy Sylvia Rafael has been called a Mossad honey trap.
  • During the Vietnam War, one of the largest intel sources for the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese intelligence operations were bars and brothels catering to American GIs.
  • Prostitution stings, where a female cop goes undercover as a sex worker to arrest anyone who employs her services are well-known in cities. The morality of this practice makes it controversial, and it is not as commonly used nowadays.
  • Electronic honey traps called "honeypots" can be commonly found in the networks of large corporations and security firms. the other wiki explains how it works.
  • Consumer activist Ralph Nader wrote a book criticizing the automobile industry in America. General Motors responded by hiring private detectives to tap his phones, and investigate his past. When that revealed nothing that could be used to discredit him, they hired some prostitutes to come on to him and trap him in compromising situations. It didn't work.
    • Nader successfully sued General Motors and the New York Court of Appeals expanded tort law to include "overzealous surveillance," covering both the investigations and the prostitution set-ups.
  • WW 2 American spy Betty Pack used her feminine wiles to get an Italian naval attache to give her the Italian Naval Code book (some say he gave her fake codes but the Italian fleets movements were predicted much more accurately suggesting he didn't) and seduced the French Embassy's press attache who gave her information to use against the Nazis.
  • A Taiwanese Army Major General Lo Hsien-che was drawn into a honey trap set by a "tall, beautiful and chic" Chinese agent and supplied her with top secret information in exchange for sex and money in what has been described as the worst Espionage case in Taiwan for 50 years
  • In the 70's and 80's The Children of God got their female members to use a method called "Flirty Fishing" which means using their sexuality - anything from flirting to full sex - to convert men to the cult. They kept exact records of their "fruits" (successes), a 1988 statistic showed that more than 223,000 men had been "fished". The cult also used Flirty Fishing to curry favours with local men of influence such as business men, politicians or police.
  • Fili Houtteman and two accomplices were given suspended sentences after it was found that photos of her cavorting naked with Daniel Ducruet, the husband of Princess Stephanie Grimaldi, were taken after he was ensnared by her in a honey trap.
  • One very bizarre incident involved Frenchman Bernard Boursicot, who attempted to woo Chinese opera singer Shi Peipu, who also happened to be a spy for China and convinced him to engage in low-level spying for the Chinese government; only for (several years later) Peipu to be revealed to be male and the child that was supposedly fathered by Boursicot having been purchased from a doctor. This incident ended up inspiring the Very Loosely Based on a True Story play M. Butterfly.
  • It turns out some smugglers do this to use marks as couriers. See The Professor, the Bikini Model and the Suitcase Full of Trouble story in The New York Times.
  • Secret Diplomacy by James Thompson and Saul Padover notes that the Austrian secret service was accused of using prostitutes as spies. Then it comments ...probably true but hardly original.
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