Adventure game puzzle idea

[wallwalker]

On the one hand, obtuse adventure game puzzles bug me. (I still remember that one time in King's Quest 6 - the only way that I passed one of the early puzzles was by saving and using every single inventory item I had, and it was the very last item on my list that worked. There was NO WAY you could know that the particular item would do what you needed it to do unless you tested it beforehand, which I'd learned a long time ago NEVER to do in an adventure game because you'd end up using up something you would need later. And then the game got rough.)
On the other hand, I understand the appeal. They can be fun to come up with and find out if anyone will actually solve them.

A while back, when I was actually considering programming one, I came up with a puzzle. It's probably been done before, but I don't know. I don't know if it'd be extremely obvious, extremely irritating or something in between.

The sequence of events:

• The character, while exploring a small area, encounters a dangerous mechanical item (a gun, or an explosive of some sort.)
  
• The character, being in an adventure game, LOOKs at the item.
  
• At some point, either at the same time or a few minutes later, the character has to walk back through the area with the item with a companion. The companion, who knows about these things more than the player character, declares that the item is "garbage" and that "it would probably fail if you looked twice at it."
  
• Later, an event would happen where the item would be activated (someone would try to fire/blow up the thing, whatever.) One of two things would happen:
  1. The item would work. Game over, obviously.
  2. The item would jam, and the PC would have a chance to stop whoever's causing the immediate problem and get away.

What would determine whether or not the thing worked and killed you? Whether or not you LOOKed at it at least twice in the course of the game. So... basically, you'd have to take a dumb metaphor literally in order to pass the puzzle.

...I don't know, it still seems less obtuse than some of the other puzzles I've seen from certain developers. (Sierra, I'm looking at you.)