Took a Shortcut

"Kuzco: No! It can't be! How did you get back here before us?

Yzma: Uh... [beat] ...how did we, Kronk?

Kronk: Well, ya got me. *pulls down chart showing the situation's improbability* By all accounts, it doesn't make sense.

Yzma: Oh, well."

- The Emperors New Groove

Let's say you're playing a Role Playing Game. You enter a dungeon using your special bloodline and navigate through waves of vicious monsters, get past several devious puzzles, and avoid all sorts of nasty traps through your psychic powers and reflexes of Bruce Lee. As you defeat that huge dragon guarding the Cosmic Keystone, you walk through the door and find... your love interest lying on the ground and her kid brother on crutches mourning over her... wait, how the hell did he get here? For that matter, how did she get here, either?

That's simple. They just took a shortcut. This is the ability that every NPC gains when he or she leaves NPC Academy. Considerations such as amount of distance or the physical capabilities required mean nothing to video game NPCs. \ If they are needed for a plot point, they will appear where they are needed at just the right time even if it means bypassing all sorts of trials well beyond them. Going beyond this, some NPCs even have the ability to just materialize and dematerialize right in front of the player's eyes. It's rare an explanation is given for why they are capable of this.

One possible explanation is that somehow any main character is a Weirdness Magnet, so only they ever get attacked by monsters and otherwise held up.

Very, very common in video games of all types. A subset of Offscreen Teleportation.

Compare Already Undone for You, which is when the NPC used the "shortcut" to get past locked doors and kill monsters, yet somehow left the doors locked and the monsters alive behind him for you to deal with.

Examples:

Film
"Through the dumbwaiter. I heard the strangest music, and I just sort of followed it down. Call it... a hunch! Ba-doom chee!"
 * In a non-video game example, in Shrek 2, Shrek, Donkey, and Fiona have to travel to the Kingdom of Far, FAR Away, which apparently takes an exceedingly long time. Yet when Shrek is, his whole gang back at The Swamp (where it's already getting dark) somehow not only gets to him in short order, but gets back , and then back to Far, Far Away, all in time to by midnight. Obviously, they Took a Shortcut.
 * There is the fact that during the first trip to Far Far Away the carriage was traveling at walking speed. Clearly later trips were made at a much faster pace.
 * It's possible that: 1.)They got a ride from Dragon, since she puts in an appearance later, and she simply dropped them off. 2) Either Drury Lane is located in or near Far Far Away, or that the Muffin Man moved there at some point.
 * Lampshaded in The Emperors New Groove, where the villains manage to impossibly reach the secret lab before the protagonists do. They acknowledge that they have no idea how they got there first and that by all accounts it doesn't make sense.
 * To elaborate further, Yzma and Kronk are struck by lightning while jumping a pit, causing them to fall. The lampshading takes the form of a pull-down map showing both groups' routes, with Yzma's ending at said pit. Even so, they still arrive first, somehow.
 * The video game adaptation has similar moments. In the final levels, taking place in Yzma's lab, Pacha keeps appearing at certain points of the game. Kuzco theorizes, "You must have eaten your way through a wall."
 * In Young Frankenstein, after having lots of trouble getting the secret passage to work, Frederick and Inga descend to Victor's private laboratory, where they meet Igor. When asked how he got down here:


 * In Big Trouble in Little China, when the good guys storm the villain's underground temple, the main characters get seperated from good sorcerer Egg Shen and his martial artist backup and take an elevator upstairs to confront the evil sorcerer Lo Pan. While being chased by Lo Pan's most powerful henchman, they stumble upon Egg Shen looking down at them from a hole in the ceiling overhead, ready to throw them an escape line. When asked how he got up there, his response: "Wasn't easy!"

Television
"Lisa: Quick! Let's get the --
 * The Simpsons, of course, parodies/lampshades this trope in "Two Dozen And One Greyhounds." Confronted by Mr. Burns in his mansion, Bart and Lisa dive into the laundry chute to escape. When they get to the basement...

Burns: Going somewhere?

Bart: That's impossible! How did you get here first?

Burns: Oh, there'll be plenty of time for explanations later."


 * Another non-videogame example is Heroes, where driving from one side of the country to the other is treated as absolutely trivial.
 * The pilot episode of Jackie Chan Adventures: "I took the stairs."
 * Phil, the host of The Amazing Race always manages to film various promos at task locations and then still be well ahead of the Racers in order to meet them at each Pit Stop.
 * One incident originally considered by most fans to be a Plot Hole in Xena involved Xena leaving Gabrielle behind and setting off on a long journey to China, only to discover Gabrielle already there when she arrived. A later episode explained how this happened and made it a relevant plot point.

Video Games
"Blaster: We took a cab."
 * In Illusion of Gaia, one level requires you to fight through a lot of monsters, do a ton of running jumps that requires Will's extraordinary abilities to perform, and otherwise should be inaccessible to a normal human being. Yet when the plot calls for it, one of the kids that is established as being rather weak (both physically and mentally) is able to walk in through that very same door that Will came in through.
 * However, at other points, it's justified -- if you pay very close attention, one of your friends is actually a fairy, and can turn herself into a flower to drift through rooms on the breeze, bypassing everything you had to fight past.
 * When you find the super-battery plans in Day of the Tentacle, Dr Fred appears from a corner of the room with no access. After he goes off to the time machine, Bernard asks "How did you get over there?"
 * That's a tame example too: people constantly walk off one side of the screen and reappear on the other. It's occasionally given an "Um..." beat, but no one really says anything.
 * In Streets of Rage, you would battle your way though armies of Mooks alone (or with another player) and the other characters would appear for the cutscenes, then vanish again.
 * Big Joe, a goofball NPC from Xenogears, keeps turning up in high security areas and the like for no real reason.
 * In the original Tomb Raider, each time you fight Pierre he takes a certain amount of damage and then runs off out of sight before disappearing. The thing is, he disappears the instant you lose sight of him which means he can potentially run behind a small pillar to escape. The remake Tomb Raider: Anniversary has a Shout-Out to this by having him do the same thing during a cutscene.
 * In Wild ARMs Jane gets around the map with ease offscreen, but in order for the protagonists to get to her home, they have to obtain the one-of-a-kind unique vehicle only found near the end of the game.
 * Even worse is Martina in Wild Arms 3. Despite being a little girl with no weapons or combat experience, she manages to traverse the deserts of Filgaia and reach places that require the use of a Sandcraft or an Airship all on her own.
 * NPCs in City of Heroes come in a couple flavors. Some will just dematerialize right in front of your eyes as you rescue them. Some will actually run back to the entrance of the map on their own, but gain the ability to not attract the attention of any enemies along the way (even if they were kidnapped by them in the first place). Some will require you to escort to the door, but what is never explained with any of this is how they are able to get back to civilization from places such as tiny deserted islands, forests full of monsters, or even alternate friggin' dimensions.
 * Similarly, in World of Warcraft, NPCs frequently fail to attract the attention of wandering monsters (unless, of course, you're on an Escort Mission). Particularly bad when, say, you've just freed a guy from a spider's web in the middle of a giant nest of giant, giant spiders, and the NPC goes "W00t! Thanks!" (literally) and runs off... through the spiders. Apparently trusting so much in his NPC ability that he doesn't even pause to go "Whoa, I'm surrounded by spiders and obviously not out of the woods yet...." On the other hand, who can argue with the lack of an Escort Mission when it might logically have been there?
 * That and he HAS to be caught again to be saved by another player, DUH.
 * Navigating the world of the Pokémon games requires the use of hidden machines (HMs), special items that allow Pokemon to perform actions outside of battle (such as cutting down trees, pushing boulders, and scaling waterfalls). These items are implied to be quite rare and can only be used once the local gym leader is defeated. Despite the fact that the games constantly throw Broken Bridges in your way that can only be circumvented by using the HMs, all random folk seem to have no problem going from town-to-town at a moment's notice.
 * Not to mention how Blue/Green manages to beat EVERY SINGLE GYM before you, even though he gets his first Pokemon at the same time you do.
 * He's obviously more athletic than Red. He can jump fences, swim well, climb rocks, you know, all the crap Red can't do.
 * Actually, while Blue/Green beating all the gyms just before you may or may not make sense, it may justify him getting to places before you do - if he got the required badge before you did, then of course he'd be able to use the required hidden moves before you do. Most of the other trainers in the series don't have this excuse, though...
 * Rather beautifully played with in Shadow Hearts: Covenant; when you run into the Recurring Traveler Magimel brothers in the Neam Ruins, they complain about having had to go through all of the dungeon's puzzles in order to get there ahead of you.
 * From The New World plays it mostly straight, where that gay couple appears pretty much everywhere ahead of you.
 * The unnamed TV Studio Director from the recent Sam and Max games is able to teleport between sets in the studio, depending on where the titular protagonists happen to be. As expected for the game, Sam Lampshades the ability at the first available opportunity.
 * Arguably, Sam & Max themselves may qualify, given that they are able to drive their (apparently normal) car to seemingly anywhere in a matter of minutes, with no explanation.
 * Rogue Galaxy is absolutely ridden with this. One particular example includes a frail and sickly woman and her child, who are searching for her husband, appearing in a lot of places. These places include factories filled with rampaged robots where even the police forces are wary of entering, plazas where the random encounters include aggressive junk colossi, and even haunted and cursed castles that you had to personally unseal to get in!
 * Played with in both Monkey Island 2 and Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis. The main character must reach a destination in adventurous ways by solving various puzzles, and once they arrive, another character that they'd left at the starting point walks in, telling them that there was a shortcut. After that, the shortcut actually becomes usable.
 * In Super Smash Bros Brawl, the Pokémon Trainer does this in the adventure mode, hiding out in the background while his Mons go through all sorts of traps.
 * This is also quite strange in many moving stages, such as Port Town.
 * Often the Trainer will have a platform in the background platform that follows the stage.
 * Parodied in Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines. The character giving your introductory tutorial (Jack) says he'll meet you up ahead. The only way to progress is to lockpick a door. As you approach the door, you hear breaking glass. When you open the door, Jack is standing by a broken window in the room, and remarks, "Uhh... Shortcut."
 * In The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time, you can have a race with the running man, but no matter how fast you are and despite never seeing him pass you, he will always be present at and end up beating you by "one second" to the finish line. This was done because the developers couldn't think of any reward to give the player for beating him, ergo, there's no way to win.
 * A similar character called the Postman appears in The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess. At any given time, he can be found in five separate places in Hyrule, even if you teleport directly from one to another.
 * In The Legend of Zelda Oracle of Ages, Ralph at one point dashes away from the Oracle of Ages and the guy with the Harp of Ages, and yet somehow still manages to find his way four hundred years into the past. Linked games can make this weirder, with Rosa somehow finding her way into, and then out of, the past with no explanation. Ambi, who is from the past, can wind up in the present in Seasons, though at least she mentions she asked Nayru to send her there. Maple appears in both time periods as well, commenting that she flew through "some weird portal".
 * Resident Evil, so, many, times. One wonders why the other characters are carrying around spare wolf emblems, tiger eyes and hexagonal cranks let alone get past all those deadly creatures. Gets even worse when it's a child around 8 doing it while you've just had to walk through the horde of the undead.
 * Not to mention the fact that in almost every game in the series, other characters can explore areas that are closed off to you, usually because of moving walls, secret passages, and doors that require specialized keys hidden in obscure and inconvenient places. How Wesker/Barry, for example, got into the crypt in the remake before you unlocked the door is a question with no apparent answer. Ditto the Chained Creature, who can apparently navigate the entire mansion grounds despite the fact that it's in shackles that constricts it movement considerably and most of the important places in the game are sealed off with locked doors the player inevitably gets the keys to. Ditto Steve in Code Veronica, who gets ahead of you without the items needed to open the pathways.
 * The Dark Id of Let's Play fame notices this a lot in his playthroughs. Hilarity Ensues.
 * Ada turns up ahead of the player character a lot in Resident Evil 4, despite the game's very linear nature. Possibly justified in that she has a Grappling Hook Pistol.
 * In fact, when you play the shorter game "Separate Ways," which features Ada's storyline as it runs concurrently with Leon's, you find out that this is exactly the case.
 * The Merchant is either a case of You All Look Familiar or he somehow always stays one step ahead of the player with enough spare time to set up gun shops or shooting galleries. Some odd places he meets the player include the bottom of a spiked pit, and behind a giant door that had to be blasted open by a cannon.
 * In The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion, a certain side-quest gives you the option to either have a corrupt Watch captain assassinated or locked away. If you choose the latter, he will eventually break out and attack you at a random point, armed only with a silver dagger. Hilariously, this can happen anywhere in the game world, including at an Ayelid ruin filled to the brim with nether liches and skeletons.
 * In The Elder Scrolls II Daggerfall, one merchant/innkeeper quest involves killing harpies in a dungeon (they want just the harpies killed?) but, later, you are asked you to save a mercenary who had been hired before you to perform the same task. Who wasn't there the first time.
 * Something similar happens in Fallout 3, during the "Replicated Man" sidequest. A short period after starting the quest, you'll be approached by an android-sympathizer who urges you not to enslave the missing android. The character actually starts out in Rivet City and will follow you throughout the entire game world until she manages to catch up to you, and so can appear in any location including in the middle of nowhere, deep inside a Deathclaw-infested death town, or in the middle of a battlefield between Super Mutants and Talon Company. Amusingly, she actually DOES NOT take a shortcut, and instead travels through the game world normally just like you do. As a result, she'll often cross pathes with and get attacked by random monsters just outside your line of sight (however, she's invincible until she talks to you).
 * Not to mention, who, if you follow him to will fight anything along the way, and will not die. Yes deathclaws, radscorpions, molerats, bloatflys, everything
 * As Alucard puts it in Castlevania Symphony of the Night, "The castle is a creature of chaos." It's as good a justification as any for how the NPC population beats you to the next stop - to them, the castle had more straight paths.
 * All of the recent Castlevania games have this problem, to some extent.
 * Final Fantasy II has at least two of these:
 * You go on an arduous quest to get a magic torch that will allow you to enter Cashuon Castle. When you finally get in, you discover that you were beaten by a guy who had the sense to rappel inside instead of hunting down the stupid torch.
 * The whole reason you need to do this quest is because this guy, who is only one capable of opening the door without a key, is not in your party. He gets a What the Hell, Hero? speech if you go back to talk to the princess, since she blames him for on the mission to retrieve the torch.
 * You travel all over the world to get the special items that will allow you access into a tower. When you get to the top of the tower, who do you find waiting for you? The wimpy white mage. No explanation is given.
 * In Final Fantasy IV DS, the character formerly known as Namingway always seems to be one step ahead of you, despite being a cute little bunny travelling by himself in a world chock full of nasty monsters.
 * Its because
 * In Final Fantasy VI, Kefka somehow manages to beat you to the Esper World despite the only known path to reach the gate was still lined with all the traps.
 * Well, it was the most obvious trap ever, with the impervious Imperial base being abandoned so Terra would be free to open up the Gate. Kefka probably, uh, magic.
 * Likewise, Locke has ransacked the Phoenix Cave treasure chests and is found at the very bottom by the time you get there. Inexplicable, since the cave is rigged with paths and obstacles that can only be overcome with two separate parties.
 * Since Locke is a treasure hunter, one can presume that he managed to find ways around those obstacles. He's awesome like that. Of course, if you for some reason try to rerun the Phoenix Cave with Locke, you'll still have to use two parties.
 * And at the very end, after defeating Kefka, any characters that you left back at the airship (if you recruited all 14 members, at least two will be left behind) suddenly run into the site of the Final Battle just so they can accompany you on the way back and take part in the credits. In their defense, all the switches and traps in the tower have been turned off by the invading parties, so these characters probably took advantage of the clear paths.
 * Final Fantasy X has Yuna and her team of Guardians battling monsters all the way on a dangerous pilgrimage. This doesn't stop a variety of NPCs, including a rather meek nun and a simple merchant, from following her and even arriving before her at certain places.
 * Possible Justified Trope, but it takes some thinking to get to it. You only really ever see people following you up to the Calm Lands, which just means they had to cross at least to Macalania, which is still relatively safe compared to end-game areas, except for the odd Malboro or Basilisk here and there. Yuna and her team really only encounter more dangerous foes when they go off the normal pathways of Spira (Bikanel Island or Mount Gagazet for example) or are facing boss monsters. In FFX-2, there's more shortcuts throughout Spira than before, and in general the areas are usually pretty even and logical in where you see the harder foes (major pathways across Spira, such as the Moonflow or Mi'hen Highroads, are pretty safe, while out-of-the-way areas like Macalania are more dangerous.)
 * And they can simply run from monsters (lampshaded by a boy at chocobo road).
 * O'aka is seen at one point to use a save sphere to warp away, like you can. The others? Their equipment has the No Encounters ability.
 * Shannon of Quest 64 appears in every Inn and some other places. Although it becomes obvious near the end of the game how she does it, it makes no sense for a very long time.
 * You can also teleport with wings for all but one ruined town to save time. Shannon's somehow there too, but this one isn't explainable...
 * In The Nightmare Before Christmas Oogies Revenge, Sally will be waiting at the end of the Hinterlands, even though Jack has to unlock several doors and fight through several monsters to reach it himself.
 * Mr.Hyde will appear in Christmas Town before Jack, even though before Jack arrived there was no door, thus there was literally no way to get there.
 * In Quest for Glory 2, Ad Avis teleports to Iblis just before you reach him.
 * Hand Waved in that the magic protecting Iblis was too strong for him to do that until the Hero made it past all the traps and seals.
 * Justified in Silent Hill 2. You run into little girl Laura several times, and she seems totally unaware of the monsters running around. This is because she's a little kid, and as such doesn't have the issues the rest of the cast does, which is why the monsters manifest. To her, Silent Hill is a regular town.
 * Played straight in Silent Hill 1. It's not clear how Kaufmann managed to get to the Resort Area before Harry did, considering that the only way to get there is to go through a sewer that was locked until Harry bashed the gate open. With Cybil, it's justified as she specifically says she followed Harry through the sewer after noticing the gate was cut.
 * Zivlyn Bane in Skies of Arcadia. No matter how secluded, how secure, how impossible it's supposed to be to get to a certain area, even if you're supposed to be the first people to have reached the place in centuries, There will be one treasure chest in that dungeon where you have to fight him over a piece of Vendor Trash. Even in the heart of the Negative Space Wedgie. (Perhaps he's a stowaway on the Delphinus. It's the only explanation.)
 * Paper Mario: When the repetitious annoyance  shows up yet again near the end of the game outside Peach's Castle. You've spent the entire game getting the Plot Coupons needed just to get to this place, and yet he gets there apparently without any problem. When Goombario examines him with the Tattle ability, he lampshades this by saying: "You've got to love this guy's effort, Mario. To follow us all the way here? What dedication! Come to think of it, how do you think he got here, anyway?" Of course, it is never explained.
 * Done twice in the same dungeon in the second game. In the final dungeon, no matter how quickly you get to the final room, Grodus will always get there ahead of you, despite probably entering after you and apparently having to go through the same traps and obstacles (although there's a few theories on how this is possible; it's implied that ). Secondly, after defeating Grodus, Bowser and Kammy Koopa will fall from the ceiling and fight you, so while you had to go through traps, Bowser just smashed his way through.
 * Cave Story: No matter where you go, Curly Brace will get there ahead of you. However the shortcuts appear rather tough on her, since she's usually heavily injured by the time you get there.
 * This is justified when you find her in the Labyrinth; Misery was rounding up the Mimigas that Curly was protecting while you were busy in the Storehouse. Curly got into the Labyrinth first because Misery teleported her there, and after you finish, she sends you there as well.
 * Tales of Symphonia Dawn of the New World has this at the end of the Temple of Lightning, where after getting three different forms for your one-of-a-kind Sorcerer's Ring, you finally unlock the door to Tonitrius' core...only to find that Decus and an NPC researcher are already there.
 * In Serious Sam II, a simba shaman even says "I think I'll take a shortcut" when teleporting out.
 * In one stage of Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune, your opponent, Gatchan,
 * In My Sims Agents, there's an area that you have to get to in order to meet "Mr. Suckers", at the request of Clara, a girl at the beach. First you have to, at which point she sets off. If you haven't done anything over there yet, you then have to . When you arrive, you find that Clara is already there. You can ask her how that was possible; she says she.
 * How did that lone druid end up at the end of the labyrinth, crawling with demons and seeded with deathtraps and forcefields that even a rescue party including a seasoned warrior, an experienced adventurer with a gun, a talented sorceress and two other guys could barely survive? That's one of the many unanswered mysteries of Albion.
 * Dragon Quest VII has the Sphinx, which the enemies have supposedly taken over. You still can't get past a locked door and reach any bosses until you solve a puzzle, which is almost standard for video games, but you can't even try to solve the puzzle unless you provide a Plot Coupon which is unique in the game and which the player has.
 * In Half-Life 2, Alyx will always arrive before the player, regardless if she has to infiltrate a heavily-guarded enemy stronghold or navigate a battlefield armed with only a pistol. Although the game often shows that her mastery of Le Parkour allows her to take more obstacle-free paths that walking tank Gordon Freeman is unable to access.
 * Magnus does this a few times in Jet Force Gemini. "I move pretty fast, I know."
 * At the end of F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, you fight your way through a city infested by Replica Soldiers and supernatural monsters to make your way to the Telesthetic Amplifier chamber at the heart of the Mega Corp's secret base that will give you the power to defeat Alma. Suddenly, Corrupt Corporate Executive Genevieve Aristide shows up, shoots your partner, and screws up your entire plan. Exactly how a 50-year-old suit armed only with a pistol managed to make it alive through a city turned into Hell On Earth, while you barely made it through even with superpowers and a squad of crack Special Forces operatives on your side, is never really explained.
 * Averted in Golden Sun - The Lost Age. At one point the party travels through a cave which contains several seemingly useless puddles. You later learn that the party was followed by a Water Adept, and if you think about it, those puddles are necessary for him to get through on his own.
 * And in a similar case in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, a trail of water puddles can create a shortcut around a particularly long dungeon, answering the question of how an NPC group (with a Water Adapt) was able to beat your party (without a Water Adapt) to the end without solving any traps. Later on, when you get a Water Adapt in the party, you can use the shortcut to your heart's content (which is handy, since the plot blocks off the previous way you got through).
 * However, it's often played straight by the villains. Notably, Saturos' party is able to enter Venus Lighthouse despite none of them knowing Reveal, which is required to open the doorway. Their successors, Agatio and Karst, are able to navigate the Jupiter Lighthouse without the aid of a Jupiter Adept, despite needing one being the reason Saturos kidnapped Sheba to begin with.
 * In Singularity, mild-mannered, unarmed physicist Dr. Barisov somehow manages to get around just as well as your character, a heavily armed special forces soldier, despite the island of Katorga-12 being a virtual Death World crawling with homicidal mutants. This is especially jarring if you factor in all the Apocalyptic Log journals telling how all the other inhabitants of the island ended up hunted down and killed by the mutants in the days following the explosion of the Singularity. There's also the fact that it's heavily implied that Barisov managed to survive on the island for 50 years, and even went around building upgrade stations at various key points to help your character out.
 * In Professor Layton and The Curious Village, Layton and Luke enter a mysterious tower through a wall opened by a key, and ascend floor by floor through puzzle-locked gates... yet they run into NPCs from the town, and wonder how they got there. It turns out that . This makes a few scenarios more plausible.
 * Lufia Curse of the Sinistrals (Nintendo DS version) attempts a justification, but fails miserably. At one point, half the party gets teleported ahead, and you need to follow them down a lava-filled temple. At one point, you get to drain some of the lava to be able to go lower, yet the teleported members were already down there. Apparently, being immersed in lava doesn't hurts if you're not a player character.
 * In Lightning Warrior Raidy II, you frequently run into non-hostile individuals in even the deepest levels of the trap and monster-infested dungeons. Most of them are explained reasonably well - kidnapped townspeople brought there by the monsters, bored mercenaries nominally working for the bad guys, sentient magical artifacts who were presumably created there - except for the theif Amura, who somehow manages to arrive at various rooms throughout the game ahead of you, despite most levels being only reachable via a staircase in the lair of the previous level's end boss. To make matters worse, you sometimes have to rescue or advise her, demonstrating that she's really not that good at navigating the dungeon on her own.
 * Perfect Dark actually inverts this when Joanna is escaping dataDyne HQ. Cassandra De Vries and some of her henchmen stop you on the top floor - she starts Monologuing with you for a while before her henchmen open fire. She then leaves through the only exit to the roof. After beating the henchmen, Joanna leaves through the same exit where there's no sign of Cassandra on the roof - until she gets to the helipad, where Cassandra then appears behind her.
 * In God of War II, the Captain of the Spartan army somehow manages to work his way past the traps and enemies of the Palace of the Fates in order to encounter Kratos.
 * One quest in The Reconstruction involves trailblazing a previously untraveled mountain pass. One of the obstacles you face is a camp of bandits. This is Lampshaded in the narration.
 * Lampshaded in Math Blaster Ages 9-12. You play the game with a single Blaster-Pal, but during each playthrough's Very Definitely Final Dungeon the other two show up. The Blaster-Pal you came with asks them how they got here so fast. One of the best responses comes from Blasternaut:

Webcomics

 * The world of Adventurers includes a service entrance marked "NPCs only" which player characters aren't supposed to know about.
 * The Jedi PCs of Darths and Droids find that the droid army has beaten then to the city, despite coming from the other side of the planet, and decide they probably took a shortcut.
 * Made even funnier when remembering that the PCs themselves took a shortcut - through the planet core. The droid army must have found a rather good shortcut to beat them.
 * That's easy. Those droids' landing craft came from straight overhead and landed right outside Theed.
 * Lampshaded and subverted in The Order of the Stick (naturally), where a disgruntled NPC lets the party use the "employee exit" to avoid a horde of angry monsters and bypass a level of Dorukan's dungeon.
 * In Gold Coin Comics, the main merchant character is always a few steps ahead of them, and even warns them about the Suspicious Videogame Generosity of his appearance.