Honey Trap - TV Tropes

Kim Jong Un: Why did he do it! Why!?
General: He was a Honeydick, sir...
Kim Jong Un: A what!?
General: He deliberately appealed to the emotional, less rational aspects of your nature, and seduced you into advancing his personal agenda.
Kim Jong Un: But I was honeydicking HIM!

— The Interview

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.

When this is used in espionage, in which the trapper gains secrets from the victim, the classic perpetrator is the Femme Fatale Spy, although the role is not quite Always Female. Male examples may target women or gay men, or be Disguised in Drag to seduce a straight man.^note In the latter scenario, the usual tropes about glamorous female spies will probably appear to be played straight... until the Unsettling Gender-Reveal.

This can also be used for Blackmail purposes, when a sexy woman approaches a wealthy married man and gets him into a compromising position (preferably in bed, though in some cases just a passionate embrace will do), while her partner-in-crime 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. A male version may seduce an Armored Closet Gay target for additional blackmail fodder. 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. Some works, especially older ones, call this a "badger game".

Also the name of special computers made to appear as desirable targets (typically governments or large corporations); used by cybercrime investigators for trapping playful hackers and crackers to learn their techniques.

Standard territory of The Vamp, the Femme Fatale (Spy spy or otherwise), or the Shady Lady of the Night. If it's being performed by a policewoman to catch criminals, it's more likely a Dirty Harriet. This is #31 of The Thirty-Six Stratagems, and thus one of The Oldest Tricks in the Book.

May involve The Schlub Pub Seduction Deduction, False Flirting Stratagem, and/or Nudity as a Bribe. See also Go Seduce My Archnemesis and Chained to a Bed. For Lighter and Softer variations, see I Have Boobs, You Must Obey! and Favors for the Sexy. In the other direction, compare Literal Maneater - where this strategy is used so she can devour the guy - and Psychosexual Horror.

Not to be confused with the Innocent Innuendo that is Agent Provocateur; that job is actually very, very unsexy. Also has nothing to do with literal honey traps for capturing wasps.

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This Malaysian ad for VAPE mosquito coils has a male mosquito about to bite a man, but is interrupted by the coil's smoke taking the form of a seductive female mosquito. He falls for it and tries to kiss "her" only to die asphyxiated by the smoke.

Anime & Manga

The title character of 009-1, 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.
Irina Jelavic (aka Bitch-Sensei) from Assassination Classroom is an expert at this. She's also teaching a couple of students her techniques.
Played for Laughs in Asteroid in Love. In the manga, the Newspaper Club gets the Baseball Team members to help with Mikage's boring (as in drilling) exhibit by claiming they're being interviewed by Ayano, who does look reasonably beautiful, but then Generic Cuteness applies to this series.
Ayakashi Triangle: Matsuri intercepts a curse meant to kill Suzu, which only seems to split her lover into Opposite Sex Clones. In fact, the curse was still inside the male Matsuri, who was meant to spread it to Suzu through sex. They're even unknowingly controlled into overtly seducing Suzu.
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.
Yumi Horikoshi from Case Closed 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.
- A Rare Male Example is Shuichi Akai, who in the past was instructed by the FBI to strengthen his position as The Mole inside The Syndicate he had infiltrated by dating a membress who also was the older sister of one of said syndicate's top scientists. However, he ended up falling in love with the woman for real...
In the '78 Captain Harlock, Shizuka schemed her way onto the Arcadia in order to seduce Harlock, hilariously Subverted as Harlock had realized this was her plan, letting her think she succeed before physically tossed her into the infirmary for her troubles.
In Ceres, Celestial Legend, Yuki Urakawa was a potential C-genomer — a descendant of a tennyo — and a honey trap was laid out for her in the form of the new science teacher. He acted affectionately towards her, playing on her being a loner and searching for someone to love her, getting into an illicit relationship with her and giving her the medication to awaken her latent powers. When she learns this, she chooses to burn him and herself alive, refusing to believe it.
A Certain Magical Index: Lessar tries to seduce Touma to cement his ties to Britain. She does this by telling him she's trying to seduce him to cement his ties to Britain. Touma, however, assumes she's being The Tease and largely ignores it all. Lessar actually does like Touma for real, she just thinks getting him to work for Britain would be a great way to keep him close.
Lessar: What's wrong with you!? You should just do what any man would and jump me already!
Touma: I don't think there's anyone on the planet who would blame me if I slugged you for what you just said.
In Darker than Black, Shihoko acted as one of these against Huang as part of her backstory.
- Shameless Fanservice Girl Brita worked her way into the American embassy to spy for the EPR by sleeping with an official, too.
In Dragon Ball Super, actor Barry Khan pulls this off by having an actress working on the Great Saiyaman movie with Gohan flirt and kiss him in order to try and blackmail Videl, taking photos of the kiss to do so. However, Videl sees right through this and husband and wife kick the man out.
Saki Miyajima in Durarara!!, who does this to get her boyfriend Kida back, following Izaya's instructions to do so.
Melissa Mao plays one early in Full Metal Panic! Sigma to capture a rogue Mithril agent.
Shows up constantly in Great Teacher Onizuka. In this setting, it seems as if half of all teenage girls have tried at least once to get somebody in a compromising position, usually for money, and the attempts are usually successful. Taking that for granted, the series experiments with motivation and choice of target, from Mean Girls blackmailing equally shady adults to Urumi in her introduction staging a molestation scene and running for the police (played for laughs; her victim's just very upset by this and she wasn't really trying to hurt him) to vigilantes trying to see who they can convince to "cross the line" and become an acceptable target for physical brutalization.
Gunslinger Girl. This was Alessandro "Sandro" Rissi's job for Public Security before he became a cyborg handler. As a result, his colleagues tend to assume he's a Handsome Lech. However the trope is deconstructed; rather than a smooth ladies man, both Rissi (and his female mentor Rossana) had to adapt their personality to whatever would appeal to the target, preventing them from forming real relationships as it was like they had no personality of their own.
Rina Mamiya from Higurashi: When They Cry helps her lover Teppei Hojou to swindle rich men of 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.
Himegami no Miko: It's revealed that Himeko has been deliberately trying to seduce Chikane by acting very affectionate and helpless around her. This is all to soften up Chikane so she'll be easier to kill in their duel. However, later it's further revealed that Himeko's faked affection has become the real thing as she fell for Chikane in long time it took for her to enact her plan.
Honey Trap Share House, It's even in the title, with Hayato and the girls trying to turn the other to their respective side.
Done in a slightly unusual way in Kamisama Kiss when Tomoe, a male Kitsune, has to distract Jirou. First, he tries to get him drunk and when that fails he notices Jirou is attracted to the heroine Nanami and is very much in denial about it. And since shapeshifting is one of Tomoe's powers, he succeeds in distracting Jirou.
Played with in Andy Seto's The King of Fighters manhua. Vice from the Orochi group not only attempts to seduce Kyo Kusanagi, but she does so while disguising herself as Kyo's girlfriend Yuki. It fails, however, as he soon realizes that a Tsundere like Yuki wouldn't throw herself at him in the circumstances they're in.
In Knight Hunters, 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.
In Maria no Danzai, Kumiru Shikimi regularly hooks up with older men online and goes on dates with them, acting like a sweet, caring, innocent girl... until she reveals that she's actually underage and charges them obscene amounts of money to keep the fact that they were about to sleep with her under wraps. If they refuse to pay up, her helper will just beat them to a pulp until they change their minds. She describes this as "going fishing".
Ribbons Almark from Mobile Suit Gundam 00 is the very rare Ho Yay version. He pretended 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.
Monster (1994): Johan uses Roberto as one of these at least once, which is... interesting. To a lesser degree, Johan acts like one himself while disguised as his sister Anna.
Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation:
- The Boreas Greyrats were interested in bringing Rudeus into their political battle and offered to let him do whatever he wanted with Eris. Eris' mother went so far as to dress her in a thin nightgown and send her to Rudeus' room with instructions to offer her body. Rudeus recognized the trap would be triggered if he and Eris ever had sex and did his best to be cautious.
- Sylphy's two attempts to bed Rudeus were very similar in nature to this, though the goal was simply for the two to develop a romantic relationship. The trap wouldn't have even been necessary if it weren't for Sylphy's timid nature and Rudeus misinterpreting the situation.
This is what Charlotte Pudding turned out to be in One Piece. As Big Mom's favorite daughter, she was sent by her Evil Matriarch mom to attract and marry the Vinsmoke family's Rebel Prince son Sanji so she could lure his family into entering an alliance that was a complete farce to begin with, allowing Big Mom to murder all the Vinsmokes and the Straw Hats) Red Wedding-style. It failed when Sanji, despite having realized her nature, told Pudding that her much-loathed Third Eye was beautiful, causing her a sobbing Villainous Breakdown. She has an Evil Counterpart later in Wano, Black Maria, who also acts as a Honey Trap to Sanji, seducing him to use him as bait for Robin. Like Pudding, she does start wanting Sanji for real. Unlike her, she remains a threat to him due to being toxic and possessive, and so he still needs rescuing.
Played horrifically and literally straight with Solution Epsilon from Overlord. She plays the part of a voluptuous meido Innocent Fanservice Girl... but, as anyone foolish enough to take her up on her flirtations discovers, she's actually a sadistic Slime Girl who can devour humans whole with her amorphous body and who enjoys digesting humans alive simply For the Evulz (and the sound of their screams).
Subverted in Private Actress. Satoka tries to set a situation where it looks like she had sex with her handsome and much older co-star to get more publicity, but said co-star's Guile Hero of a daughter foils this attempt.
Rebuild World: Heavily conversed. Akira, who grew up being betrayed by everyone he met, is implied to have been a victim of these causing Paralyzing Fear of Sexuality. As an excuse for her Shameless Fanservice Girl behavior, Alpha says she's training him to resist these, and she also tries to keep Akira isolated by saying Sheryl is attempting to ensnare him in one. Sheryl helps Akira with her Guile Hero talents, which include being an expert at honey traps, and seeing her do that elicits a Trauma Button panic in Akira. Nonetheless, when she digs some information out of The Rival Katsuya by flattering his Pride and acting like The Confidant easing his Survivor Guilt, Akira praises her for that ingenuity; rare warmth for her from Akira's Sugar-and-Ice Personality. So, Sheryl continues honey trapping Katsuya, leading into an explosive Love Triangle due to Viola and Inabe's interference. However, that information from Sheryl allows Akira to set up a Batman Gambit and kill Katsuya, by forcing him to defend his teammates, leaving himself vulnerable.
In Rosario + Vampire, a slug monster blackmails Kurumu into dating her with some rather... candid photos he took of her. This works because Kurumu is noted to be very innocent, shy and chaste — as far as succubi go.
Rurouni Kenshin:
- Tomoe Yukishiro took up the role to avenge her fiancé Akira Kiyosato, whom Kenshin killed. Too bad she ends up falling for him instead.
- In RK Ibun: Ashitarō zenka ari, Asahi Kubota is forced to try befriending the titular Ashitaro solely to try getting from him a "treasure" that he had found between the Juppongatana's dissolution and being thrown in jail: Shishio's sword Mugenjin.
In Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs, Saber Rider himself hit it off with a beautiful girl who turned out to be this. He easily unmasked her, however, and later she died/was sent back to the Vapor Zone.
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' dreams.
As par for the 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 Skip Beat!, this becomes a major part of Saena Mogami's background. She was working on a high-profile case in her law firm and dating a guy named Misono, who was actually a spy sent by the opposing company to sabotage her case. He succeeded in stealing the case data and disappeared into the night, with nobody even knowing anyone called Misono to have existed, and Saena was left with her case ruined and her boss' reputation in shambles. And later learned she was pregnant by said honey trap. This is her reason why she was always abusive and cold towards Kyoko, seeing her as a living embodiment of shame and her greatest failure. She did end up leaving her with Sho's family because she thought it was the kindest thing she could do to her.
In SPY×FAMILY, as an undercover spy, Twilight will often sweet talk and even sleep with any woman who may prove useful in an operation. In Mission-01, after Twilight, who's going by the name Robert, steals and destroys some Blackmail material of an Ostanian politician that's useful to Westalis (his homecountry), he's on a date with the politician's daughter in a fancy restaurant, where she thinks he'll propose. However, Robert flat out tells her she's simply too dumb to hold a meaninful conversation and dumps her right there before walking out of the restaurant. In Mision-35, after a mission with fellow agent Nightfall, aka. Fiona Frost (who has a crush on Twilight), Twilight, who's now going by Loid Forger, takes Yor on a date to put her mind at ease. As the date progresses, Yor gets drunk and starts asking Loid if he loves Fiona, and Loid makes the assupmtion that Yor' s jealous because she's fallen in love with him, and for the sake of their (fake) marriage/Operation Strix, Loid decides to take advantage of the situation by telling her he's fallen in love with her as well and proposes that they should get married for real. It backfires when Yor's romatic inexperience, combined with the booze in her system, results in her getting nervous and kicking him in the face, which makes Loid think she rejected his advances, however when she sobers up the next morning, they clear up the situation.
In 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.
In Stepping on Roses, Soichiro married Sumi to set her up as one for his rival Nozomu, as well as to get his share of the family inheritance In a twist, Soichiro ended up falling for Sumi... and so did Nozomu - who went the Yandere way.
Mari Minami from the Vampire Princess Miyu manga, who seduced/befriended boys so her Shinma father could feed on their blood.
Wicked City:
- At the very beginning, Renzaburou had a very detailed and hot sex scene with a beautiful High-Class Call Girl. It quickly became Fan Disservice when the woman 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.
- 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.
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 woman 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.

Comic Books

Black Widow: 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. (In fact, this was pretty much her MO as a villain, and likely how she originally got her name, before pulling a Heel–Face Turn and joining S.H.I.E.L.D.)
Daredevil: 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.
Disney Ducks Comic Universe: In the backstory of Back to the Klondike, Goldie invited Scrooge to dine with her and drugged his coffee to steal his gold. It's implied she had scammed other people the same way.
Nightwing: Dick Grayson has been both the target of a Honey Trap and a Honey Trap himself. He's a sucker for a beautiful woman, while at the same time being a natural charmer.
Sin City: Blue Eyes 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.
Star Wars (Marvel 1977): Luke finds himself the target of this sort of ploy on a number of occasions:
- In the Monastery arc, the priestess Sister Domina, secretly a member of the Tagge family, pretends to be sympathetic to the Rebel cause while repeatedly flirting with Luke in order to lure him into a sense of security until the Imperial trap is sprung.
- In "The Last Jedi!", Zeta Traal, an Imperial political officer assigned to a world that the Rebels are trying to return a sympathetic prince to, tries to seduce Luke (at the time in disguise as a bounty hunter) in order to manipulate him into defecting to her side.
- Shira/Lumiya is an Imperial agent sent into a deep-cover infiltration of the Rebel Alliance, where she poses as a pilot and strikes up a longer term flirtation with Luke, with the intention of assassinating or sabotaging him.
Supergirl:
- In the storyline Starfire's Revenge, the titular villain orders her conman Derek to romance Supergirl and then slip a depowering pill into her drink when she is distracted so they can get her killed.
- Crypt of the Frozen Graves: Downplayed. Supergirl was meeting a crook called Bruce Ryan to get information on the Frisco crime syndicate, but the man went into hidding when his boss got wind that he was a snitch. Linda still needs information about his boss, and since Bruce had not met her secret identity, Linda decides to pry the facts out of him by meeting him and parading around provocatively dressed. However, althout she is willing to seduce him and put up with his grabby hands, Linda hopes to be able to get her information without bedding him.
Thunderbolts: In the Thunderbolts (2012) Annual, Agent Venom (Flash Thompson) and the Punisher (Frank Castle) go to Jotunheim and pick a fight with a horde of Frost Giants in order to get the attention of Valkyrie (Brunnhilde)—Flash's on-off girlfriend from when he was a member of the Secret Avengers. When she shows up to take them to Valhalla, she and Flash end up in bed together... which enables the Punisher to steal her magic sword Dragonfang and an Asgardian helmet. Flash is indignant to learn this was the plan all along, but the Punisher tells him to shut up, suit up, and get out before she wakes up.
Venom: In Venom (2003), Trish disguises herself as a scantily-clad cowgirl at a bar in order to infiltrate a S.H.I.E.L.D. squad sent to apprehend Eddie Brock, seduces one of the soldiers, murders him once they're alone, and then disguises herself as him using the Venom symbiote clone.
Wonder Woman: Steve Trevor occasionally acts as a date to get close to and feed misinformation to his targets, the first time in Sensation Comics #10 (1942) where he went on a number of dates with and acted the foolish drunk to "Dolly", an Axis spy. Wonder Woman is generally very displeased when he's called on to spy this way.
X-23:
- Laura has used this at least once. On a pedophile. When her niece was kidnapped by a serial child killer, Sarah Kinney snuck the teenage Laura out of her cell on an unauthorized mission to look for her. Laura disguised herself as a girl scout to catch the killer's attention and distract him long enough to finish him off and rescue her cousin.
- While shaking down some old contacts from the Facility while helping Hellion locate Mercury, who had been kidnapped for experimentation, Laura is shown dressed rather provocatively after throwing one of her targets from a window. While not explicitly stated, it's certainly suggested this was the manner she used to get close enough to interrogate him.
Zatanna:
- Zatanna (2010):
  - Mikey dresses up in a revealing outfit (daisy dukes and a tight blouse with a bare midriff) in order to seduce Evil Puppeteer Oscar Hampel to find out what he did to Zatanna.
  - Yuki-onna (Who despite the name is a Succubus rather than a Yuki-onna) attempts to kill Zach by approaching him as a gorgeous woman and trying to lure him to an "intimate location". Zatanna manages to put a stop to her because she gets the chance.
- Zatanna: Everyday Magic: Nimue pulls this off on Constantine, flirting and seducing him and once she has him on her bed, she puts a curse on him by biting his hand, marking him as a Human Sacrifice for a Trader demon.

Comic Strips

The government of China produced a comic strip on April 2016 in which a young and pretty Chinese woman dates a foreigner (who turns out to be a spy) who convinces her to release government secrets to him. It was made to warn Chinese women about dating foreigners.

Fan Works

All Assorted Animorphs AUs: "What if Jake seduced a sub-visser?" is about Jake asking out a high-ranking member of The Sharing on a date in order to learn about the Yeerks' plans.
In Avenger Goddess, when Diana comes to find Thor, Jane, Darcy and Selvig initially assume that she is basically intended to be one to Thor, playing on his "delusion" of godhood, before she demonstrates that she genuinely is a goddess and proves that Thor is also telling the truth about himself.
best served cold (Nyame): A heroic example. The premise of the story is Laurel spending the five years between the sinking of the Gambit and Oliver's return seducing and marrying Malcolm in order to gather information she can use as evidence against him after finding out he was responsible for the former.
A crossover fic between Buffy and Stargate eventually has a small school built in Colorado to train the newly activated slayers with an injured Willow acting as the headmistress. Eventually, rumors begin circulating in the nearby town of a strange school near the Cheyenne Mountain base full of young attractive women with the most common theory being that it's a large-scale Honey Trap school set up by the military. ^*
Danny Phantom: Stranded: Subverted. Donovan pays Vivian $1000 to flirt with and seduce Danny at the country club in Visited so they can record it as proof of him cheating on Star to break them up. However, it fails since Danny doesn't like Vivian at all, is only interested in Star, and is smart enough to figure out that it was a ploy early on, plus Colette ruins the plan by picking a fight with Vivian, which lets Danny escape unnoticed.
In A.A. Pessimal's Discworld fics:
- In the Guild of Assassins, the sultry and adventurous teacher Madame Emmanuelle-Marie Lapoignard les Deux-Epées attempts to teach an optional module to senior girls on Honey-Trap Techniques and Strategems. Her intention is to point out to her girls that if you think the way to a client's heart, (or indeed his kidneys, liver, or jugular vein) is through his stomach, then you are most assuredly aiming too high. The course was cancelled after several senior girls attempted to defect to the Seamstresses' Guild, and parents started complaining to the school management.
- A sub-plot in Hyperemesis Gravidarum concerns what happens when people belonging to the diplomatic communities of two Embassies, representing countries locked in a bitter state of mutual hostility, try the Honey Trap on each other simultaneously. The two people involved decide they really like each other anyway and elect to have a damn good time, whilst the two Ambassadors collude in using it as an informal, reliable, and mutually beneficial channel of communications for sharing the sort of information that would prevent their nations ending up in a bloody and ruinous war. Again.
In Displaced Into The Marvel Universe, Peter Parker is forced into this role when he infiltrates the "The Velvet Note" club as a waiter and catches the eye of a flirtatious waitress eager to get busy with him, which he uses as an opportunity to snatch an electronic keycard from her that grants access to the VIP lounge, allowing him, Cassandra and Matt Murdock to find the Owl. Cassandra is not pleased with his tactic.
In Dragon Age: Inquisition fanfic Walking in Circles, At one point, Solas accuses Evelyn to be this, thinking that she’s trying to offer herself to him to make him give up on trying to escape Ostwick Circle. She isn't and immediately chews him out for that accusation.
In The Fledgling Year, Gyneth is revealed to have been not only The Mole reporting back The Conspiracy, but also planning to seduce, marry, and eventually assassinate Archenland's crown prince.
In Harry Potter and the Paradigm Shift Tonks commented that Occluding while wanking was a required Auror skill because they might be called upon occasionally to get information horizontally and it would be bad if their "lover" was a Legilimens.
In the appropriately titled Miraculous Ladybug fic The Honey Trap by Mystic_Raven20, Marinette, after two heartbreaks, works in an agency carrying these out. Normally, it ends with the girl filmed making out with the husband, although sometimes, she would let him bring her home, where the tipped-off wife is waiting already.
Hours 'Verse: Morgana assumes that Akira is getting close to Akechi to lower his guard and string him along for information and tells the rest of the Phantom Thieves as such. Akira himself is horrified at the implication.
Irkoli: Jack does a rare male example by seducing Parin and getting him to bed solely so he can blackmail him into helping revive Seo (who is currently a museum piece) from stasis.
Maidenless No Longer: Melina attempts this on the Tarnished, as she is worried he won't go along with her plan since he doesn't need her to turn runes into strength (because he's already as strong as he can possibly be). It... well, it doesn't make anything worse, but he was always planning on saving her, so it doesn't really change anything. Of course, then he starts seducing the rest of the female cast, and she wonders if she awakened some "horrible lusts" in him.
In the Girl Genius fic On Her Undying Majestys Secret Service, a reference to On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and so has a Bond Girl Expy in Melisande, which has a possibly false etymology relating it as the French version of Melissa, a name connected to the Latin for Honey, "Mel". And like many Bond Girls, she falls In Love with the Mark.
In the Miraculous Ladybug/Batman crossover Perfect Sense, once it becomes public that Marinette in Bruce Wayne's daughter, Adrien receives a phone call from Nathalie that his father wants him and Marinette to get... friendlier, to help speed along some business deal. Unknown to her, the two of them are already in a relationship. Marinette gets a good laugh once told.
Reversal Salt AU: Lila Rossi worms her way into Marinette's heart through manipulative tactics such as playing defender against Chloé's bullying and looking like a timid, broken girl in need of affection. Her motivations are to leech off Marinette's rising fashion designer career and, later, of her status as Paris' beloved heroine. Of course, Lila serves no master other than herself, so it's a bit of a Zig-Zagged Trope. The tragic part is that Lila succeeds, destroying her girlfriend's self-esteem in te process. The concept is lampshaded by the second chapter's title: "Honeypot".
Rise of the Minisukas: General Taihou calls his plan to have Mana to seduce Shinji in order to extract Nerv's secrets out of him "Operation Honeytrap". Meanwhile, the Minisukas, who are planning to catch her and send her away from Shinji, call Mana by the codename "Red Honey".
Rising of the Sleeping Soldier: When her attempt at joining Alucard's party fails, Malty breaks into his room and tries to sleep with him. He does not fall for it for a second, literally fetching Motoyasu just to get rid of her.
Ruin of the Yiga: Kogha thinks that his adoptive daughter (who is actually Zelda, The Princess Who Carries the Blood of the Goddess) can convince the chosen hero of the Goddess to defect to the side of evil. Neither Sooga nor Ruin are fully on board with that idea.
Sooga: [dangerously calm] You want Ruin to seduce the Hylian Champion?
Kogha: WHAT!? No! Not my sweet, precious baby! No, what's wrong with you? [to Ruin] Baby, if he touches you, you kill him. Go for the guts. You're too good for him.
Ruin: [dazed] Thank you, papa.
Kogha: I'm not telling you to seduce him. Just entice him. Be friendly. Let him know things are good here. That's all I'm saying.
In the Marvel Cinematic Universe fic The Storms of War, Sharon is investigating a man for possible connections to HYDRA, because of his grandfather, Heinrich Zemo, which involves entering a relationship with him, much to Steve's jealousy.
In "The Third Life of Steve Rogers", at one point Steve and Peggy- whose family have been acting as a Mysterious Protector for all of the future Avengers- have to send their granddaughter Natty (named after the future Black Widow) to essentially serve as this for a teenage Tony Stark; in order to ensure that Tony isn't in the car on the night his parents died without making him suspicious, they have to send someone to distract Tony in a manner that he wouldn't suspect, and Natty is the only person available in Tony's age bracket who they can trust with this particular job.

Film — Animated

Subverted in How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World. Grimmel uses the Light Fury as bait in a trap for Toothless.
Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade: Kei Amemiya is 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.
Top Cat and the Beverly Hills Cats: Kitty Glitter is contacted by Snerdly in order to serve this role to distract T.C. and draw him away from Benny, whom he's protecting from Snerdly's thinly-disguised murder attempts. Unlike most cases, she isn't actually evil (and doesn't seem to realize that Snerdly is up to no good) — she's just told that T.C. is rich and immediately comes to try and win his heart.

Pinballs

Bally's Mata Hari (1978) pinball machine shows the title character as a seductress and spy who's implied to attact people with her charm and assassinate them once their guard is down.

Podcasts

In The Hidden Almanac, one storyline describes a war between a colony of house mice and the squirrels that live in the backyard. One significant event in the war involves a female mouse infiltrating the squirrels disguised with a false tail, and seducing a high-ranking squirrel to learn about their battle plans.

Pro Wrestling

The Premier Athlete Brand "fired" Su Yung during an EVOLVE show in order to make their enemy, Rich Swann, more likely to trust her. Swann did court Yung but The Brand got too impatient for Yung to get very far, but they still would have had him in the hospital if not for the Heel–Face Turn of Johnny Gargano, who could not stomach such a trick even if he did hate Swann too.

Radio

The Heidi And Frank Show includes a recurring segment called "Put Your Man Where Your Mouth Is," in which female listeners volunteer their male partners to have their fidelity tested by getting hit on by a Playboy Playmate of the Year. The test is to see whether the man takes her number and whether he's called it by the time they broadcast. Very few men have passed the test.

Tabletop Games

Spirit of '77: Characters, male or female, can be the Honeypot story type, which gives characters the skills using charisma and looks to get things done. As the game is set in The '70s, think Charlie's Angels, Starsky & Hutch, or any number of Exploitation Films.
Yu-Gi-Oh!: The card "Spy-C-Spy" depicts what clearly is a Honey Trap.

Theater

City of Angels: Mallory forces Stone into a compromising position on his own bed so a photographer can rush in and take a flash picture. She then steals his gun before running out, helping frame him for a murder subsequently committed with it.
The College Widow (1904): Peter Witherspoon asks his daughter to be this for Billy Bolton, a talented half-back he wants in Atwater's football team. Jane spends the first act slowly catching Bolton's attention and later, romancing him. Her mission is to ensnare him so thoroughly that he chooses to live near her (on the Atwater campus) over attending his father's alma mater.
Mata Hari (2016) has the titular dancer on the receiving end of one — French agent Ledoux has sent the pilot Armand to romance Mata Hari and see if she's spying for Germany. Only, a Romantic Fake–Real Turn happens and Ledoux is the one who ends up as the Crazy Jealous Guy, more likely over the other man than Mata Hari.
M. Butterfly: the French diplomat Gallimard falls in love with a Chinese opera singer named Song Liling and has a long-term relationship with her, only to learn many years later that Song is a male spy sent to dupe him into revealing trade secrets to the Chinese.

Video Games

Zhores in Absolute Obedience is a rare male example. The whole reason for meeting him is one of his former victims wants to get revenge.
Played with in Alpha Protocol, where the player needs an attractive female to get close to a man. He can suggest she employ her (not inconsiderable) sex appeal or that she uses her skill as a reporter. Suggesting she play seductress actually leads to her making a snarky comment about always wanting to be someone's Honey Trap and weakens your relationship with her. Playing up her professional qualifications makes her consider the Player Character more favorably.
Prior to the events of Baldur's Gate III, Astarion's vampiric master Cazador used him and his six spawn "siblings" as honey traps, sending them to lure humans into Cazador's mansion to be fed on and turned into vampire spawn as part of a ritual. Astarion alone seduced thousands of people over 200 years, and all entirely against his will. Naturally, Astarion has a lot of issues with his sexuality.
Fable I: The Darkwood Bordello sidequest has you find where the lecherous manager hid the property deed. If your Hero would rather indulge in some Incredibly Conspicuous Drag than just get the man drunk, he can join him in bed and then learn the truth from him talking in his sleep.
If your Courier in Fallout: New Vegas is female and has the Black Widow perk, you can become this to Benny. When you meet him in the Tops casino, you have a dialogue option that allows you to seduce him. At first, he's rather disturbed and confused that a woman who he shot in the head is hitting on him, but naturally, he goes along with it and leads you up to his suite, dismissing his cadre of heavily-armed guards as well. After a (very funny) off-screen sex scene, you're given the option to snuff him with a pillow while he's asleep. This is one of the easiest ways to snag that Platinum Chip from him.
In Far Cry 4, Mohan Ghale sent his wife Ishwari to spy on and seduce Pagan Min because he didn't think she had a place directly fighting in his rebellion. It ended up working too well, as Ishwari genuinely fell in love with Pagan and had a daughter with him. When Mohan found out he killed the child, and in retaliation, Ishwari killed him and then fled to the United States with Ajay, the protagonist of the game.
The notorious Wall Market section of Final Fantasy VII features Tifa attempting to be one of these in order to get some information from a nasty, lecherous gangster. Aerith and a Disguised in Drag Cloud sneak in to try and save her but eventually agree to help her with her plot. Depending on how the player does at dressing Cloud up, you can also have him seduce the Don into giving information.
Fire Emblem:
- Sonia Reed from Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, who was sent by her boss Nergal to seduce her way into the life of a very powerful warrior named Brendan Reed and seize control of his clan. She very nearly succeeds, but then Brendan confronts her and she kills him. Even more, she's an Artificial Human, which coupled with her lovely looks means that she probably was created or modified with the trope in mind.
- In Fire Emblem Fates, Azura and Hinata's supports involve a pretty Nohrian girl as a G-rated version of this, using her lovely looks to gain Hinata's trust. Azura, however, catches on and confronts her. She turns out to be a noble girl who bullied Azura when she lived in Nohr, and it's implied that her clan ultimately fell out of grace and that's why she's a spy.
In Freeciv, this is the reason why communist nations produce better spies.
Grand Theft Auto:
- 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.
- As part of the plan to rob a casino in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, C. J. seduces a dealer who has an important keycard (as well as some... unusual tastes).
- Grand Theft Auto IV:
  - A mission for Brucie involves Roman setting up a gay dating profile for Niko so that he can lure the target out for a date. Niko is pissed but Brucie offers to pay big money for the job.
  - Michelle is a Honey Trap for the player. A ways into the game, it is revealed that a shadowy organization operating out of a paper company front is using her to get info on Niko.
Hero King Quest: Peacemaker Prologue: Spiderweb disguises herself as a human in order to join the Hero Prince's inner circle and get in his good graces. He develops a crush on her, right up until she kills him to prevent him from killing her sister.
Hitman (2016): The two targets of the first level, Dalia Margolis and Viktor Novikov, specialize in this. Viktor runs a fashion brand called Sanguine, which secretly sponsors the two's criminal spy ring, IAGO. One of their favorite tactics is to have Dalia recruit models from Sanguine to seduce various powerful individuals and gain information from them. One mission story has famous male model Helmut Kruger decide to take the job and meet Dalia, who tasks him with seducing the daughter of a megacorp's CEO (Helmut realizes he's in a bit deep when she also gives him a cyanide pill), something Agent 47 can exploit by disguising himself as Helmut to get Dalia alone with him.
The League of Legends champion Cassiopeia specialized in this. She would seduce ambassadors who came to visit her father, the second most powerful man in Noxus, and lure out all their secrets. This backfired on her when she tried it on a Freljordian ambassador. He refused to reveal anything until she swore an oath of secrecy upon a runed blade — after which he let himself be embraced by her. When she later went to report the information to her father, she broke the oath. As a result, she went through an agonizing transformation into the gorgon we see her as today.
In Mass Effect 2 Commander Shepard, either gender, acts as the honey trap for Morinth in Samara's loyalty mission.
EVA in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is a shameless homage to the Honey Trap Bond girl. For both sides (Snake and Volgin).
Attempted and subverted in Octopath Traveler II. Temenos is investigating a cult in the town of Crackridge during his third chapter, and its residents are hostile to him as he's a cleric of the Sacred Flame. They send a woman named Reiza to get rid of him; after she convinces Temenos to follow her out of town, Reiza proceeds to flirt with him as a distraction. She asks to check out his "mighty staff" and offers to "sheathe" it for him, but Temenos sees through this (as he spotted her wearing a necklace that the rest of the cultists have) and immediately shoots her down.
Rise of the Third Power: Sparrow takes on a civilian identity, Brooke, in order to get close to Rowan and trick him into leaking intel. While she did gain affection for him to some extent, she still reports this information back to the Arkadyan Empire, resulting in the Resistance HQ being destroyed.
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.
In The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, it is possible to romance Keira Metz by going on a rather lovely date with her, which also includes one of the series' infamous sex scenes. It's all a ruse, however, as at the end of their love-making, she knocks Geralt out with a spell. Turns out in her entire quest line, she was manipulating Geralt into clearing the way to a mage's laboratory so she could steal his notes and use the knowledge on them to buy favour with the Ax-Crazy King Radovid. She has no real antagonism with Geralt and can even be convinced as to the insanity of her plan and turned into an ally for a battle later on, but her deception is still ruthless and amoral, but hey, Geralt seems to be into that type of woman.
Edward in Witches' Legacy is a male example. He's sent to seduce Lynn into a trap by the witch hunters. Of course, it backfires when he falls in love with her and she shows she's a good witch.
The sidequest "Price of an F-Cup" in Yakuza 1 begins with Mai running away from a drunkard and toward Kazuma for help. When Kazuma scares him off, Mai shows her gratitude by inviting him to her favorite bar and trying to flirt him into drinking with her. If you accept more than once, he blacks out and you lose most of your money.

Visual Novels

In Daiteikoku, Honeytra makes honey traps with photos of herself having sex with Japanese military officials to blackmail them into working for China.
To steal a helicopter in The Eden of Grisaia Millie puts on quite a show for the actual pilot and then knocks him out and steals his uniform when he's successfully lured in.
In Shall We Date?: Ninja Shadow, Tsubaki Kusunoki uses himself as this in his route, intending to get Saori to love him so he can use her potential affections to his benefit. But by the time he reveals it and an understandably heartbroken Saori calls him out, his feigned feelings have become real...
In Sunrider Liberation Day, Chigara is revealed to be this. As one of the Pro to types, she was given Fake Memories and planted in a place where she would meet the protagonist Kayto Shields, join his crew, and fall in love with him… all as part of a long-reaching plan to have the peoples of the galaxy rally behind Kayto and make him their leader, so that the Prototypes’ leader Alpha could then manipulate him through his love for Chigara. In an unusual twist on this trope, she herself is not aware of her role or her true nature as a Prototype.
In Villainous Nights, Renzei "Falcon" Feng turns out to have specialized in using seduction as a tool via which to perform assassinations for Optimus. A scene late in the character's second season indicates that Optimus purposefully assigned him a lot of this kind of assassination mission as a means of testing his loyalty and breaking him down emotionally. His initial flirtations with Monarch in his first season were also staged, albeit with the intent of recruiting her rather than killing her.
Renzei: When it bothered me, I asked myself how I'd want to die if I had to. "After sex" always sounded alright.

Web Animation

Etra chan saw it!:
- Akane is hired by Tachibana and Azami to seduce the latter's husband, Kuroki, so they can fabricate the evidence that he was cheating, in order to get the compensation money from him. Fortunately, Kuroki knew about their scheme and Akane felt guilty for trying to trick him because she was only in it for the money, plus she perceives him as an honest man who refuses to cheat on his wife.
- Yuzuriha tries to trick Kuroki into having sex with her so she and Hiiragi can squeeze him out of his money by using the fabricated evidence of adultery that Hiiragi would take if Kuroki agrees to let her in his house. Fortunately, Kuroki doesn't fall for her. It turns out she was also doing the same thing to several men before Kuroki.
Helluva Boss: Loona serves as this in "Spring Broken". I.M.P. needs to take out multiple targets at a spring break party, so in order to not draw attention and cause a panic, Loona assumes a Human Disguise of an attractive goth girl, then flirts with the targets to lure them away from the party, where the imps kill them.

Webcomics

In the backstory of Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures Cyra used her charm to seduce the Dragon M'Chek and carry out of an affair with him that everyone in the city of Hishaan knew about. This in itself was nothing to write home about as Cyra was a literal succubus, but it turned out to be only a cover for her true agenda, mainly killing M'Chek and taking over the city by absorbing his power, an idea that went horribly when she enacted it.
In Girl Genius, Euphrosynia Heterodyne is believed to have manipulated the Storm King and used his love for her to enact his downfall. As this happened around 200 years before the story, most of those who might actually know what her initial motivation was are long gone. There are also hints that perhaps no one but Euphrosynia really knew what she was after, though it is known that she used her connection with him to try and steal secrets from his friend's hidden workshop.
Though it was (hopefully) without any actual sex, recent revelations in Gunnerkrigg Court have shown that Antimony's mother Surma acted like 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 Order of Tales, Bottle Women are an alchemically-created One-Gender Race. The very first one was created specifically to seduce an ancient warlord and kill him. The Bottle Woman who appears in the story is Last of Her Kind and kills a modern warlord without the need for seduction, though.
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 Pixie Trix Comix, scheming wrestling boss GiGi wants to divorce her husband, but also wants to avoid him getting hold of any part of her family’s business in the settlement. So her (clearly very dedicated) secretary/assistant FiFi seduces him while taking pains to ensure that she gets a clear video of the act in which he identifies himself by name.
In Sluggy Freelance:
- Monica acts as Riff's girlfriend in order to get information for Chilus' cult. Oddly, her ability to keep Riff ensnared seems to be based not so much on sex appeal as "acting like a random nutcase."
- Another girlfriend of Riff, Sasha, also played this role against him for Hereti Corp. Riff actually came to believe he loved her, only for her to attempt to assassinate him. She also faked a relationship with a man named Tommy, even to the point of being married for 5 years, only to leave him after Hereti Corp successfully out-lobbies the senator Tommy was working for.
In Spying with Lana, this is part of Lana's modus operandi.
In the Tales Of Gnosis College, Jill Keeney accepts a mission of this sort with the aim of overthrowing a Latin American dictator.

Web Original

In Backstroke of the West, the Hopeless Situation Parliament sends Allah Gold to spy on Speaker D, because according to Ratio Tile, "they want to know him at fuck".
Vivian from Felarya is well-known for using seduction magic on smaller humanoids, both male and female. Being a 70 foot naga and a predator, she then proceeds to eat the people she seduces.
In The Gamer's Alliance, Anya is sent by the Matheson Crime Family to seduce Nivek Cheavin, the boss of the Nightstalkers, in order to spy on the gang's activities. Haruko Mizushima, posing as a young woman, infiltrates Castle Barjassil in the past by seducing King Anshar who wanted to marry her, and this is how she gets closer to the king's treasure chamber to steal a valuable artifact. She later ends up becoming a target of many people who wish to protect her from harm, only for her to reveal later how she'd been using them all for her own ends.

Western Animation

Parodied with a Visual Pun in Adventure Time's Season 5 episode "The Party's Over, Isla de Señorita". The Ice King tries to impress/seduce Princess Bubblegum by sneaking into her room with a literal pot of honey and pouring it on her waffles. Spoiler alert: It doesn't work.
Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog: In "Lovesick Sonic", Dr. Robotnik builds a robot named Breezie, who looks like a beautiful hedgehog girl, to seduce Sonic and then trap him. However, while she was originally just manipulating Sonic, she soon falls in love with him for real, sets him free, and tells him everything.
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!"
- Happens again near the end of Season 5, with Archer himself as the victim. After being seduced by the wife of the Central American Republic of San Marcos' dictator Gustavo Calderón, he is repeatedly blackmailed at the threat of having her expose the affair to her husband... into having more affairs with her. Mercilessly lampshaded by Malory.
  "That's the honey pot! How could you fall for it? It's espionage 101!"
Batman: The Animated Series had a Poison Ivy scheme where she created plant-based human copies to each perfectly appeal to a bunch of rich men and women (Bruce being one of them), intending for the men to rewrite their wills to include their new flames before she would murder them and reap the rewards.
- She'd previously attempted this by herself with Harvey Dent in her debut episode. Seducing and then leaving "Mr. District Attorney" in a life threatening coma via a passionate kiss. Here though Ivy's motivation was strictly revenge for Dent's involvement in the near extinction of a rare breed of rose.
Beware the Batman: "Wayne hooked. Awaiting instructions." Sent by Bethanie Ravencroft.
The Season 2 finale of Rick and Morty reveals that Tammy, Summer's high school friend who hooks up with Bird Person is actually a government agent employing this in order to get the target and all of his terrorist friends in one place. She reveals herself in the middle of the wedding reception, resulting in a massive firefight in which she kills the husband herself.
Todd McFarlane's Spawn:
- Jade once served as one in order to assassinate Genghis Khan via Out with a Bang.
- The vampiress that Spawn encounters is someone who Spawn empathizes with over their mutually-cursed status, with him shielding her from sunlight when a window in his church is broken and expressing a seemingly mutual attraction... right up until she reveals she's an assassin sent by Heaven and tries to kill him.
In The Venture Bros., a flashback shows that the Blue Morpho (acting under the orders of Jonas Venture) once disguised himself as tennis star Billie Jean King and seduced supervillain Dr. Z all just to get a jade statue from him. Dr. Z for his part was utterly baffled as to how the Blue Morpho was able to pull it off considering that he claimed that they performed every sexual act there was before he revealed himself.
In Voltron: Legendary Defender, the paladins come to the aid of two stranded aliens and their robot. The female quickly catches the attention of Lance, who offers to show her the Blue Lion. She ends up stealing it with the aid of her partner, with the intent of giving it to the Galra Empire for a reward.

Real Life

Mata Hari was a famous instance during World War I, until she was executed by firing squad in 1917.
The KGB and Stasi used this method - in fact, the KGB even had a special school of seduction, the “Sparrow School” (or so the rumour went), to train agents. Well, they tried to use this method anyway. With mixed results. For instance:
- Sometimes the targets gleefully enjoyed the, errr, "ministrations" of the ladies in question while not giving up secrets. These were often people who were warned, realized what was going on, or who did not have as much information as thought.
- The honeytraps were, however, often pretty successful in targeting the secretaries, wives, and daughters of Western officials and personnel — women who would have access to information. They were, curiously, unable to repeat the success to the same level against male aides of such people. The fact that women are more susceptible to traps of this kind (contrary to popular and conventional views) has also been noted by other agencies. (There are other examples below.) It was likely due to no one expecting women to be targets at all, or if it happened, weren't expecting them to fall for it. The most common theory is that women are usually on their guard against men hitting on them, so if an agent managed to get past that, they were a lot more open, while for men, the fact that a girl well out of their league was paying them such rapt attention raised alarm bells. An alternative theory is simply that men were specifically warned about the chances of this happening while the women were not.
- Forty women were prosecuted by the Federal Republic of Germany for passing secrets to their "Romeos", many ending up in prison as a result.
Defense contractors and other firms handling sensitive or classified data warn their employees about this very clearly. They will put up conspicuous workplace posters that say, in effect, "If she's a 10 and you're a 2, be careful." They also constantly warn employees, that disclosing sensitive information could get them not just fired, but serious prison time.
A method used by men to force women into prostitution is to seduce the woman, and then use the established relationship to press her into prostitution with emotional blackmailing. A variant, used by pedophiles, is to initiate cybersex via Skype, and then use the data material to blackmail the teenager into doing more and more explicit things in front of the webcam.
In the '50s, the KGB wanted to gather blackmail material on Indonesian president 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. It didn't go as expected: 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^notehidden as a ring, 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.) At least two of the famed Four Beauties of Ancient China, Xi Shi and Diao Chan (the latter's more fictional, but she's based on a nameless handmaiden that existed) became famous for doing this and led the demise of two men of high power (King Fuchai of Wu, and the tyrant Dong Zhuo) with their act.
Apparently there were some cases where beautiful women were sent as tribute/ransom. Said women having been infected with STDs. Guess what happened next...
In the Vietnamese Lam Sơn uprising (1418-1427) by Vietnamese rebels under Lê Lợi against Ming dynasty China which was occupying Vietnam during the Fourth Chinese Domination of Vietnam, the Vietnamese rebels used courtesans as honeypots against Chinese soldiers whom they seduced, drugged, tied up in burlap bags, and killed. Lê Lợi. then established the Later Lê dynasty.
- Đào Thị Huệ was a Vietnamese courtesan (đào nương) credited with inventing Ca trù singing to seduce Chinese soldiers. When China occupied Vietnam, a garrison of Chinese soldiers was established in the village. Đào and her fellow Vietnamese courtesans opened up a wine shop and danced and sung to lure Chinese soldiers in. The Vietnamese wore just a boudice (yếm) undergarment and a skirt when dancing. The Chinese soldiers were pampered by the Vietnamese courtesans and feasted on meat and wine, and every night, the Chinese slept in sacks and they had each other tie the mouth of the bags shut since they wanted to avoid mosquito bites. The Vietnamese girls pampered and seduced the Chinese men into letting them tie the mouths of the bags, leaving all the Chinese men at the mercy of the Vietnamese girls every night. When the time was right, Đào and the courtesans drugged the wine of the Chinese men to put them to sleep to make sure they couldn't resist once in the bags, and after tying the bags, the Vietnamese girls carried the bags to the river and threw them in for the Chinese men to drown. To make extra sure the Chinese couldn't survive if they woke up, the Vietnamese tightly tied rocks to the bags. Đào and her girls killed most of the Chinese garrison this way and once the Chinese garrison commander noticed he lost most of his men, he evacuated the area in fear that it was haunted or that illnesses in the swamps around the village were killing his troops.
- Lương Thị Minh Nguyệt also used the same techniques. A large Chinese fortress, Cổ Lộng citadel was built next to her village. Lương wanted to fight against the Chinese, but she wasn't adept at fighting, so she opened a pub next to the Chinese citadel serving wine and meat and where beautiful Vietnamese girls danced to attract Chinese soldiers. The Chinese soldiers eventually allowed the Vietnamese girls in and out of their citadel where they collected information and spied for the Vietnamese rebels. The Chinese soldiers at Cổ Lộng also slept in burlap bags every night and tied the mouths of the bags to avoid mosquitos. The Vietnamese courtesans again seduced, pampered, and fed the Chinese men into trusting them, and tied the mouths of their sleeping bags tight every night. Lương sent intelligence to the Vietnamese rebel leader Lê Lợi, and her girls eventually drugged the wine of the Chinese soldiers, stuffed them into the burlap bags, beat the bags with hammers and sticks, and threw the bags into the canal Kinh Ma (Kênh Ma) which means ghost canal, where all the Chinese soldiers drowned and clogged up the canal. Lê Lợi's soldiers then seized Cổ Lộng citadel, and rewarded Lương for her role.
- A Vietnamese woman named Hoa opened a pub near Hoàn Kiếm lake in Hanoi. She and other Vietnamese courtesans danced and sung wearing just their boudice (yếm) undergarments and a skirt to show their arm and leg skin to seduce and lure Chinese soldiers in and drugged their wine, then put them into burlap sacks to throw into the river.
The Later Lê dynasty on the suggestion of Võ Duy Chi also used Vietnamese courtesans against Chinese pirates under Yang Yandi loyal to the Ming in 1682, sending 300 Vietnamese singing girls and prostitutes on small boats to the Chinese fleet to seduce them. After the Vietnamese girls were done seducing the Chinese, they used wet red hankerchiefs to wet the gunpowder on the Chinese cannons and left on their own boats. Later the Vietnamese fleet attacked the Chinese pirate fleet and the Chinese could not fire back so they were decimated and reduced from hundreds of ships to just dozens.
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 specifically to serve as bait for malicious hackers can also be known as honeypots.
Katrina Leung worked as a double agent for China and the FBI. She seduced several FBI employees including her FBI handler who got her information of use to China.
Cheryl Bentov, aka Cindy, an American Mossad agent, seduced former Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu (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 that say his actions compromised Western operatives and operations in Pakistan but the British government denies this.
A North Korean woman named 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 Polish woman 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 an 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. 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 implies 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 the danger of 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. He let her in and promptly got served (both literally and figuratively).
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 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 was also 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. South Park parodied this with a male cop who performed prostitution stings a little too enthusiastically while Disguised in Drag.
- The inversion of this trope involves male cops who pretend to be potential clients and arrest any prostitutes who proposition them.
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.
World War II 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 fleet's 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.
In 1939, the Sicherheitsdienst (Nazi secret service) took over a fashionable brothel in Berlin called Salon Kitty (named after the brothel's owner and Madam). The entire building was wiretapped and most of the girls were replaced by female spies who were trained to gather secret data from the various foreign dignitaries who visited the brothel through sexual means.
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 '70s and '80s, 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 businessmen, 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.
Rose O'Neal Greenhow was a Southern socialite and spy for the Confederacy during the American Civil War. She was hugely successful because men seemed incapable of refusing her anything. On multiple occasions, she seduced Union officers and politicians to where they were willing to betray their duty (and left a few suicides in her wake).
A young woman Nancy Michelle Mendoza stood trial for entrapping wealthy businessmen this way for a San Diego gang to hold hostage.
During the investigation into the horrendous murder of single mother Rachel Nickell, London cops tried to frame up a local man called Colin Stagg, their preferred and only suspect. The problem was, while Stagg was undoubtedly the sort of oddball loner with a slightly tarnished past who might have graduated to sex murder, nothing tied him to the crime, he had an alibi, and he repeatedly refused to confess, even under heavy pressure. So a WPC was recruited to be a "whore for the law" and to befriend him, first by mail and then in person, and to do all it took to get him to confess. Stagg was convicted of the horrendous murder on very dodgy evidence. This echoes police practice in the Barry Bulsara case, where another loner oddball was fitted up for the murder of TV presenter Jill Dando. Unfortunately for the Met, an appeal court threw out the charges against Stagg and he received compensation for false imprisonment. Even more unfortunately, the real killer, Robert Napper, a schizophrenic who had already committed a number of rapes in the area but gone un-arrested despite his own mother telling the police he'd confessed to her, went on to murder another woman and her young daughter while the police were solely focused on Stagg.
During The Great Northern War, Charles XII of Sweden overran Saxony and decided to keep his army there for a year of rest. The Elector of Saxony^note sent his Swedish-born mistress to meet the King at his headquarters, hoping she could induce him to end the war and get out of the Elector's land. Charles absolutely refused to see her.
On a minor scale, it's not uncommon for some thief gangs to have pretty women as their members - with the specific "mission" to distract male victims while the others rob them silly.
During the Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile, it's said that there was a group known as the "Brigada Rosa" (Pink Brigade), made of female celebrities who would use sexual favors to get information for the CNI (the dictatorship's Secret Police, whose top agent Alvaro Corbalan had ties with the local jet set).
Used in the assassination of "the Red Prince", Ali Hassan Salameh. The Mossad knew about Salameh's love for women and sent an agent posing as a British national who was working for the British-based arms of welfare organisations supporting Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. The agent supposedly started an affair with Salameh to gain his trust. This eventually led to Salameh's assassination by detonating a car outside the agent's apartment as his convoy drove by.
Roald Dahl, of all people, served as this during World War II, as explained in this Cracked article and this Drunk History segment.
Gender inverted with the 'Romeo' spies of East Germany.
The sisters Freddie and Truus Oversteegen were members of the Dutch Resistence in World War II, and they specifically flirted with Nazis to then kill them as soon as they lowered their guards.
This was echoed in the early stages of The Troubles when British soldiers on local leaves in Stroke Country were seduced by girls pretending to be from sympathetic parts of Northern Ireland. When the girl got the lonely squaddie "home", he ran into Provisional IRA militants who shot him, having used her as bait. British soldiers were ever after warned about this sort of thing. The tactic has also been used by Protestant militants, angry about having their "right" to chastise their Catholic neighbours being constrained by unsympathetic security forces: in this case humiliation rather than murder was the objective.
The Taliban used young boys as honey traps against the Afghan police. The Afghan police refused to give up their boy lovers.
As a Fidelity Test, some clingy jealous girls will have their hot friends or family members attempt to seduce their boyfriends. If the seduction attempt succeeds, things could get dramatic. Even if they pass, the boyfriends could get quite angry that their partner didn't trust them.
During World War II, Special Operations Executive would use 'decoy girls' to chat up trainees to see if they were vulnerable to this approach. If the trainee revealed anything about their secret work, they failed.
Fear of this technique being used on gay men during the Red Scare prompted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to screen them out of the Canadian civil service using the "Fruit Machine" - a device that supposedly tested whether a man was gay by measuring pupil dilation when exposed to photos of nude men.
The Heidi and Frank radio program in Los Angeles had a recurring segment called "Put Your Man Where Your Mouth Is" in which women would volunteer to have model Dani Matthews flirt with their boyfriend to test his fidelity. Several days later, Dani would appear on the show and tell the story of how she approached the man and gave him the number of a burner phone. The hosts would then check the phone to see if the man had left her a message, thus failing the fidelity test.
The court speech against Neaira, a famous Greek hetaera, contains accusations of her and her husband carrying these out. The Athenian law allowed a husband to kill his wife's lover on the spot if caught, so they could demand a sizable ransom.
Members of the IDF are frequent targets of Palestinian operatives pretending to be pretty women on dating apps for the purpose of gathering intelligence or blackmail material.
"Pig Butchering" Scams (or shāzhūpán, 杀猪盘) are a type of 419 Scam that originated in China, but exploded globally during the start of The New '20s, that works like this: The mark is contacted on a social media or dating app (or sometimes by "mistakenly" receiving a message from the scammer on a messaging app like WhatsApp) by someone using the picture of an attractive man or woman, the scammer then quickly establishes rapport, learning about their victim, building an emotional connection for a period of weeks or even months (this is called the "fattening" stage, akin to fattening a pig for slaughter, hence the name), eventually they would comment on being into investing (usually in cryptocurrency, but sometimes also on gold or forex) and after establishing trust with the mark they would invite them to invest with them, usually saying that they have an uncle or aunt with inside information for investments. The victim is then lured into depositing all their money into something that may look look like a legitimate investment platform, but in reality it's an account controlled by the scammer who then vanishes with all the money (this is appropriately called the "butchering" stage).
Concurrent to the above are the less elaborate but just as damaging dating scams from West Africa (usually the scammers are based in Nigeria, Ivory Coast or Ghana) and India.
During the 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Ukrainian hackers pretended to be attractive women on dating sites to lure Russian soldiers into giving away their locations. The Ukrainian military then launched missile/drone attacks on several Russian bases the locations of which were revealed by this deception. The scam is also used on Russian civilians to get money from them for the war effort.
New York real estate developer Charles Kushner was prosecuted and imprisoned for, among other crimes, hiring a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law William Schulder, having the encounter filmed and then sending the tape to his sister. The crime Kushner was convicted for was witness tampering, since he was in effect retaliating against Schulder for cooperating with federal prosecutors who had indicted Kushner for illegal campaign contributions and tax evasion.
Camillo Benso, prime minister of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia and then Kingdom of Italy, had a cousin named Virginia Oldoini who was a diplomat, a spy, and a seductress. She was implied in many political intrigues of the age, gathering precious intelligence for the government, but above all she played a role in seducing Napoleon III of France in order to make him more sympathetic to the Italian cause for unification. After one of their meetings at Compiègne, he promised to assist Piedmont in case of a defensive war against Austria - which Benso promptly triggered through his machinations.
This is a common tactic used among street gangs, especially in areas like Chicago and California. Many murder victims of gang hits, were setup by attactive women whom led them into an ambush.

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