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{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|"''Ask any fighter: A hammer is just a really heavy set of lockpicks.''"|''[[
Here at
The hero has only a limited amount of time to do something, be it rescue, [[Dungeon Bypass|transport]], [[Percussive Maintenance|repair]], or simply [[Outrun the Fireball]], but has a problem. Namely, a very complicated problem that would need time to solve, time the hero definitely doesn't have. After trying (or not trying) in vain to solve the problem the technical way, the hero just shrugs it and [[Take a Third Option|Takes A Third Option]], namely, by getting rid of the problem altogether, often through violence. When the smart character is trying to get a way around it and the dumb character resorts to violence, the dumb character is often [[Too Dumb to Fool]]. When the [[Leader]] tramples over objections to prevent [[Divided We Fall]], this often comes into play.
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Heroes who make a habit of doing this may boast that [[We Do the Impossible]].
{{examples|Examples:}}▼
== Myth And Legend ==
* The [[Ur Example]] and [[Trope Namer]] was the mythical, impossibly complex [
**In any event the Priests of Gordium were [[Might Makes Right|not going to argue]] were they?
▲* The [[Ur Example]] and [[Trope Namer]] was the mythical, impossibly complex [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordian_knot Gordian knot] that, the oracles predicted, could only be untied by the future king of Asia. Alexander the Great tried in vain to untie it and then, when that didn't work, simply drew his sword and sliced it in two. Other versions of the story are the exact opposite of the trope, however, with Alexander finding a clever way to untie the knot without cutting it, like where he basically removes the main object that the knot was apparently wrapped around, thus loosening its entire structure; the equivalent of leveling a building by removing its foundation.
== Anime and Manga ==
▲* ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh]]''
** In one episode where the main characters are doing the [[Indy Escape]]. When they run out of places to... well, run, Honda turns around and punches the boulder as it's about to crush them. It pops. Turns out it was a balloon with a speaker inside.
** Also, the episode in which Kaiba literally crashes Pegasus' mainframe--[[Colony Drop|he smashes it with a satellite]].
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* In one chapter of ''[[Keroro Gunsou]]'', the Keroro Platoon has been beefing up the security on their base when Oka Nishizawa, Momoka's [[Action Mom]], comes calling for apparently sinister purposes. The first obstacle they present her with is a heavily-encrypted electronic lock on the mini-fridge that serves as the entrance to their base. Oka almost immediately [[Myopic Architecture|rips the door off its hinges]].
* During the Hunter exam arc in ''[[Hunter X Hunter]]'', the group is confronted with two doors: one leads to a short path to the exit, but only allows one person to pass, while the other has a long path (and will take too long for them to get to the exit in time) but will allow them all. Either one can make it, or no one? They [[Take a Third Option|take the third option]] to go through the second one, and then break down the wall between the passages to get to the shorter one. It takes a lot of effort, but it's faster than the long passage would have been. Later Gon beats a guy who rotated super-fast to defend himself by ripping the floor out from under him.
* ''[[
** In one episode, Roger is about to open a door using a high-tech device that would form the key for a lock when inserted, just before Dorothy just breaks the door open. ...with a one-handed push.
** In the last episode Roger [[
* In ''[[Mouse]]'', one ancient challenge was to figure out how to untie this extremely hard knot. Alexander the Great solved it by simply cutting it. So to make the next one more challenging, they made the second knot out of metal chains.
* In ''[[Phi Brain: Kami no Puzzle
==
* The first arc of ''[[The Losers]]'' has team tech Jensen having to copy the secure hard drives of Goliath, an oil company. When security finds out about the operation and exchange fire with his friends, he hacks the outer casing with an axe and pries the thing out whole.▼
* Notable ''[[Magic the Gathering]]'' player Zvi Mowshowitz used the line "If brute force doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough. Why not use more?" in [http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/zm41 a column on proper Magic strategy].▼
** Even more so recently, because contrary to his original "famous" deck, [[Turbo Lands]], his recent decks in the past season have all been super-aggressive aggro decks, with some of them winning on turn 3 or 4.▼
▲* The first arc of [[The Losers]] has team tech Jensen having to copy the secure hard drives of Goliath, an oil company. When security finds out about the operation and exchange fire with his friends, he hacks the outer casing with an axe and pries the thing out whole.
* ''[[Watchmen]]'' features the Gordian Knot Lock Company (one of many companies owned by Ozymandias, who fancies himself a new Alexander the Great). Rorschach breaks the door down. [[Running Gag|Several times.]] {{spoiler|This is actually a clue as to Ozymandias' endgame: the U.S. and Soviet Union are on the verge of nuclear war, and have been at each other's throats for so long that it has become impossible to untangle them from their conflict. So he plans to cut the knot by introducing a third side for them to unite themselves against--an genetically engineered monster that he teleports to New York, killing half the city. What's frightening is that--at least initially--it ''works''.}}
** {{spoiler|A case of [[Enemy Mine]], if you think about it. Long ago, [[Nazi Germany]] united both sides as a target to destroy. Oz' simply invents a "knot-cutting sword" that they won't learn is nonexistent, at least until peaceful coexistence is already a reality. The only [[Epic Fail]] in reasoning here is the assumption that [[The Great Politics Mess
* In ''[[Incredible Hercules]]'' the title character is presented with a game of dark elven chess that he must solve to pass the Test of Mind. He responds by referencing [[Star Trek
** It wasn't Hercules's resourcefulness the princess was [[Distracted
* In ''[[Justice League]]'', Batman loses in a fight to Prometheus because he downloaded the fighting abilities of several great martial artists. In the rematch, Batman wins because he switched that disc with another, containing the fighting skills of Professor Stephen Hawking.
{{quote|
'''Batman:''' ''Winning.'' }}
* ''[[Nodwick]]'': Yeagar [http://nodwick.humor.gamespy.com/gamespyarchive/index.php?date=2009-10-16 shows how he deals with]{{Dead link}} [[Only Smart People May Pass]] (and that is hardly the only time he does so).
** He has a similar reaction to cursed swords with the equivalent of [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything]].
* Whenever [[Batman]] battles The Riddler, he'll often beat his riddles using either this Trope or [[Take a Third Option]], essentially bypassing various [[Xanatos Gambit
* The section of ''[[Preacher (Comic Book)|Preacher]]'' that shows [[Big Bad|Herr Starr's]] background and [[Start of Darkness|turn to villainy]] includes a bit where, as part of his training in [
== Film ==
* In the film ''[[Men in Black (
* In the new ''[[
▲* In the film ''[[Men in Black (Film)|Men in Black]]'', J is taking a test with several other potential MIB candidates. The written part of the test is administered in a room with a large table surrounded by several egg-shaped chairs, although the table is out of reach. J is the only one to think of pulling the table closer to him so he can use it.
* A similar thing happens in ''[[Johnny English Reborn]]'' (a parody of spy movies and takes quite a few cues from ''[[James Bond (
▲* In the new ''[[Casino Royale (Film)|Casino Royale]]'', [[James Bond]] pursues a [[Le Parkour|freerunning]] enemy who nimbly scales obstacles and slips through narrow gaps. Bond finds more simple but equally effective means of traversing obstacles, such as running straight through a plaster wall.
* In ''[[
▲* A similar thing happens in ''[[Johnny English Reborn]]'' (a parody of spy movies and takes quite a few cues from ''[[James Bond (Film)|James Bond]]''). While chasing someone, the sequence goes as follows: Opponent climbs over a fence. Johnny opens the door. Opponent uses parkour. Johnny uses a ladder. Opponent jumps across a gap and onto a building. Johnny uses a crane carrying a load of bricks to send himself across. Opponent scales scaffolding to get down. Johnny uses the lift.
▲* In ''[[Goldeneye (Film)|Goldeneye]]'', the villains make their getaway in a car into a crowded Russian street. Bond commandeers a tank and drives through a wall.
* This is practically [[Indiana Jones]]' ''[[Planet of Hats|hat]]'' (well, other than the [[Nice Hat|cool fedora]]).
** [[Raiders of the Lost Ark
** In the case from ''[[
** In ''Raiders of the Lost Ark'', when Indy sneaks into a Nazi U-boat base, he ''could'' continue sneaking around, staying out of sight. Or he could [[Mugged for Disguise|knock out a guard and steal the guard's clothes]]. And then, after finding that the guard's clothes are too small for him, he ''could'' bluff his way out of trouble when a larger superior officer mistakes him for the guard and begins lecturing him for his poor appearance, or he could [[Groin Attack|knee the superior in the balls]], knock the superior out too, then steal clothes that will actually fit.
* In ''[[Big Trouble in Little China]]'', the heroes are trying to enter an elevator but the door is jammed. Jack Burton hauls out a knife and cuts through the wall to get in, which works because the wall is made of paper.
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** Miles Dyson starts to explain how to open the container holding the robot arm, but is interrupted by John breaking it.
** Also, when his keycard isn't working to open a door earlier in the scene, he is interrupted by Arnie blowing it up.
{{quote|
'''Terminator''': *hefts grenade launcher* "Let me try mine." }}
** When John Connor, in a phone box, asks Arnie if he has a quarter for a phone. Arnie smashes open the phone's money box, picks up a quarter, and hands it to John.
* ''[[The Fifth Element]]'' gives us the Corben Dallas method of negotiating a dangerous hostage situation:
{{quote|
'''Corben:''' Anyone else wanna negotiate? }}
** [[Fridge Brilliance|Of course, this only works]] because the Mangalores give up when he shot their commanding officer, and Mangalores are absolutely useless without their leader. Really. They literally won't fight without a senior Mangalore present.
** [[Fridge Logic|Why didn't the second most senior Mangalore take over then?]]
** Because the last leader just got shot in the head.
* ''[[G.I. Joe:
{{quote|
''Snake Eyes stabs the panel''
'''Breaker:''' --or you could just stab it. }}
* ''[[MacGruber]]'' ([[The Movie]]) sees the eponymous hero confronted with a nuclear missile that's about to launch. He looks at the complicated wiring, panics, and declares he doesn't know how to defuse it. His allies express their disappointment and the villain basically says "[[I Knew It!]]"...to which Mac replies that he wasn't finished. He ''does'' know how to rip out the guidance computer, the plutonium, and a couple of other critical parts. The missile will still explode, but it won't go anywhere before it does and it won't be nuclear.
* The first ''[[Tomb Raider]]'' movie: Lara Croft finds the old clock containing the [[Plot Coupon]] (conveniently in her own basement), and her [[Smart Guy]] tries to disassemble it carefully and slowly, keeping track of which screw goes where. Lara will have none of it and smashes the clock to pieces with a hammer.
* In [[
* In the movie ''[[Sneakers]]'', [[Robert Redford]]'s character is faced with a locked door and keypad and asks for advice over his earpiece on how to disable it. After several moments of a one sided conversation with Redford saying "mm hmm... uh huh... yeah," he says "Okay, I'll give it a shot," and kicks in the door.
* ''[[Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow]]''. Sky Captain tries to figure out a way to get into Dr. Jennings' lab. Polly smashes the window, reaches in and unlocks the door.
{{quote|
* ''[[Patton]]''. During the invasion of Sicily an entire column of troops is being held up by a couple of stubborn donkeys on a bridge. After his subordinates try to push, pull and cajole them out of the way, Patton steps up, delivers a bullet to each of their brains and has them tossed off the bridge.
** In a non-violent method, he comes to a cross road with two caravans of vehicles trying to both get by at the same time. He pulls rank and stands in the cross road, ordering one vehicle from one group to go by, then one from the other group. All they needed was a traffic cop directing them but it took a general to do it.
* In the ''[[Night Watch|Day Watch]]'', Tamerlane spends a while examining the ways into the maze guarding the Chalk of Fate, before realizing it would be a lot easier to simply [[There Was a Door|blast through the walls]] themselves to get to the middle.
* In ''[[
* [[Se7en|In seemingly]] [[Sherlock Holmes|every buddy cop movie]], [[The Presidio|there is a scene]] wherein a character will attempt to open a door with lock picks or some other delicate method, whilst his street smart friend will simply kick the door in.
* In the Robert Downey Jr./Guy Ritchie version of [[Sherlock Holmes (
* Near the end of ''[[I, Robot (
* ''[[Jurassic Park III]]'' has one of the characters finding a row of vending machines, pulling out change and counting how much he needs. One of the other characters, remembering that they're on an abandoned island, simply walks up and kicks through the display window of the next vending machine and takes what he wants. Then the first guy tries it on his vending machine, and completely fails.
* In ''[[Captain America:
* In ''[[Ever After]]'', the servants are trying to get Danielle out of the cabinet her mother locked her up in. Feeling that it is useless to pick the lock, Da Vinci comes over, simply pulls out the hinges to the door and opens it that way. Da Vinci comically lampshades this.
{{quote|
'''Da Vinci''': Yes. I will go down in history as a man who opened a door. }}
* In ''[[The Last Unicorn]]'' Schmendrick tries various spells to free the unicorn. After a few unsuccessful tries he produces a set of keys he has stolen that will open the cage.
* In the film of ''[[The Bourne Series (
* Played with in ''[[Blue Streak]]''. [[Martin Lawrence]]'s character is a professional jewel thief, trying to steal a large diamond under heavy security. Him and his apprentice get to the safe. The pro asks the rookie (in a quiz-like fashion) how to open the safe. The rookie starts rattling off the procedure. The pro stops him and tells him that step one is to check if the door is open. Naturally, he's just kidding. The safe is locked.
== Literature ==
* In the [[
* [[Discworld]]:
▲* In the [[Artemis Fowl (Literature)|Artemis Fowl]] series, Holly had to defeat a number of projected holographic opponents as part of her entrance exam to the LEP. Rather than fight with all of the holograms, she simply shot the projector. They had to pass her because she technically defeated every single opponent.
*
*** According to Norwegian folklore, King Olaf did the same thing, thereby winning an island from the king of Sweden.
*** It should be noted that none of Cohen's barbarian horde were very impressed by the story, feeling that cutting it was rather a cheap move.
** Another time Granny Weatherwax challenges three prospective witches to knock her hat off. Two of them decline to attempt, one concentrates and fails to do anything. She then asks Nanny Ogg to demonstrate, who then throws a stick at her head.
{{quote|
'''Granny:''' But you didn't. }}
*** This is a running theme in that particular book; the younger witches think witchcraft is about magic, while the older ones ''know'' that witchcraft is about having the capacity to think sensibly for three seconds in a row. When the younger witches still complain, Granny gets frustrated and obliges them by using magic to blow up Nanny's hat.
** Also, apparently in the early days of the Watch, they had a sledgehammer that they referred to as "the search warrant." As in, "We're going to need to check his house for evidence. Don't forget to bring the search warrant."
* Speaking of Olaf, or in this case Captain Sham, this is employed in book the third of ''[[A Series of Unfortunate Events]]'' to reveal Count Olaf's disguise to authority figures, with the author explaining the concept by name (Gordian Knot) immediately beforehand.
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* In [[How Kazir Won His Wife]], Kazir wants to marry the daughter of a king. The king, with one always-truthful daughter and one always lying daughter [[Only Smart People May Pass|sets him a series of]] [[Knights and Knaves]] puzzles, ending with an impossible one: he must determine both the name and the marital status of one of the king's daughters, whose honesty he does not know, with a single yes/no question. {{spoiler|one of the king's daughters elopes with Kazir}}
* ''[[Myst]]: The Book of Atrus'' has Atrus and his father Gehn exploring the ruins of D'ni, searching for blank books. While scavenging, Atrus happens upon a door locked by a puzzle that could have come straight from the video games, and happily settles down to think his way through it... only to be disappointed when Gehn simply smashes the door apart, nicely foreshadowing the latter's approach to problem-solving.
* In [[
* [[Robert Heinlein|Heinlein]] has a short story, "The Long Watch", wherein a nuclear engineer on the moon locks himself in a bunker (with all the nuclear warheads) to stop a rebelling office from taking control of them. His first thoughts are to defuse the "brain" circuits of each bomb, realizes he doesn't have enough time and ends up... smashing the plutonium with a hammer.
* In ''[[The Princess Bride (
* In ''[[
* In ''Humans'', a safe cracker explains his favorite method of opening a small wall safe - break the safe out of the wall and take it home with you, where you'll have all the time you need to open it any way you prefer.
** [[Truth in Television]]: There have been reports of robberies where the perps will steal an entire cash register rather than try to break it open in the store.
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* Averted in-universe in [[Tortall Universe|Bloodhound,]] where Beka is given a briefcase charmed for protection before setting out to Port Caynn. The spell is on the whole case, "none of this spelled-the-buckle-so-cut-the-leather nonsense."
* In the ''[[
▲== Live Action TV ==
▲* In the ''[[Stargate SG-1 (TV)|Stargate SG-1]]'' episode "Full Circle", Carter, Jonas Quinn and the ascended Daniel are trying to find the Eye of Ra. They decipher ''where'' it is, but can't figure out how to open the compartment...until Carter, noting that they don't have much time, tells the other two to stand back, and shoots it open with her P90.
** And much earlier, as Bra'tac is telling SG-1 of the convoluted series of tasks they have to do to destroy the shield generators, O'Neill busies himself with pulling the pins on a pair of frag grenades and dropping them down the hole.
** O'Neill does this a ''lot''. In fact one could almost describe cutting knots as [[Cast Speciation|his job on the team]], just like Carter [[The Smart Guy|handles tech]] and Daniel [[Cunning Linguist|handles talking]] and Teal'c handles [[The Big Guy|asskicking]].
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* In ''[[Twin Peaks]]'', Sheriff Truman gives Agent Cooper Laura Palmer's diary, saying that they haven't found the key yet. Cooper simply breaks the lock with his hands.
** In another episode, a character finds a metal puzzle-box which he is supposed to tortuously figure out how to open. He blasts it a few times with a handgun, which opens it right up.
* In ''[[
** And this ends up in one of the comics leaving him with a crazy with a mechanical eye (Mal failed to kill the guy, just took his eye) working with the Hands of Blue to kill Mal and capture Simon and River. Needless to say, they fail. [[Epic Fail|Epicly]].
** Or the episode where a [[The Don|Crime Lord's]] [[The Dragon|Dragon]] refuses to take back money from Mal for a job they couldn't complete, instead telling them how he'll come after them until he kills them all. Rather than create a Recurring Boss, Mal kicks the guy into the turbines of his spaceship. When they bring the next mook over to the same spot and restart the process, the mook [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPRlHwwVIug immediately agrees to do whatever Mal says].
* ''[[
** Penny has to get Sheldon's Flash drive from inside a puzzle box. Before he gives her the instructions on how to open it over the phone, Penny asks if he has any emotional attachment to the box. When Sheldon answers no, she simply smashes it open.
** In another episode, Howard tries using a robot hand to pleasure himself. After Leonard and Rajesh run out of ideas of what to do, they take Howard to the Emergency Room. There, the Nurse suggests simply turning the hand off, and despite Howards pleas not to do so, she turns it off, and the hand lets go.
{{quote|
* On ''[[All That]]'', this was pretty much the M.O. of Kel Mitchell's Repair Man (Man man man man man...), who would "fix" problematic objects by simply destroying them completely. No more object, no more problem.
* On ''[[
* ''[[The Tenth Kingdom]]'' sees a pair of doors near the end, when Tony and Virginia are trying to sneak into the castle. The creature guarding the doors is a talking frog, and he presents a variation of the [[Knights and Knaves]] scenario where, of course, one door leads to a horrible death. Tony, by now fed up with the [[Insane Troll Logic|bizarre rules
* ''[[
** In the episode "Fear Itself", Anya asks Giles if he can make a door to rescue the trapped Scoobies in the haunted house. He says "I can", and instead of a mystical spell, whips out a chainsaw and starts cutting.
** Buffy does this earlier in the series when fighting a demon called the Judge which is invulnerable to any weapon ''forged''. Cue rocket launcher.
* A similar thing happens in the ''[[
* In ''[[
* In the ''[[
{{quote|
'''Owen:''' ''shoots alarm''
'''Ianto:''' [[Deadpan Snarker|Well, that's one way of doing it.]] }}
* One episode of ''[[
* An episode of ''[[
* In the "Countdown" episode of ''[[
** He's smart enough to do it ''after'' kissing Beckett.
* In one episode of ''[[
{{quote|
* In an episode of ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'', the only weapon that can kill the monster of the week is a sword trapped Excalibur-style inside a stone. Dean does at first try just pulling it out, confident that he's the brave knight the legend says can free the sword; when that doesn't work he switches to sticking explosives all over the rock. {{spoiler|[[Crowning Moment of Funny|And manages to break the sword]]}}.
* In a dream sequence on ''[[
* In one episode of ''[[
* [[Truth in Television]] example: On ''Untold Stories of the ER'', a patient who desperately needs surgery can't be treated at the small clinic where he's diagnosed, but his insurance won't pay for the ambulance service to take him to a bigger hospital. Unable to cut through the red tape to arrange transport for their patient, the doctors hit upon a counterintuitive solution: they call 911, which the ambulance service is contractually obliged to respond to, even when the call comes ''from'' a hospital.
* On ''[[The Amazing Race]]'', Season 11, Danny became frustrated while doing a Roadblock that involved finding and collecting old newspapers from locals in a Malaysian neighborhood, so he just went to a store and bought a bunch of papers to complete the task (though this would cause them further problems later in the race).
** On Australia Season 1, When Nathan grew tired of [[Luck
== Machinima ==
* ''[[Red vs. Blue]]'': Church is implanted with ten megaton bomb which proceeds to destroy the present and send everyone into the future, except for himself who instead gets sent into the past (don't ask). After returning to the present, Church makes several attempts to disarm the bomb in his former self only to be constantly met with failure, including making several copies of himself. At one point, his plan is as follows:
{{quote|
'''Other Church:''' Why did you do that?
'''Church:''' Well... seemed like fun... think I went a little nuts there for a while... }}
** Sarge uses his contingency plan when their attempt to bluff their way past the computer failed. The contingency plan being a shot gun.
==
=== Card Games ===
▲* Notable ''[[Magic:
▲** Even more so recently, because contrary to his original "famous" deck, [[Turbo Lands]], his recent decks in the past season have all been super-aggressive aggro decks, with some of them winning on turn 3 or 4.
=== Tabletop RPG ===
* In [[Tabletop RPG
** A hilarious example is seen in [http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=680 this] ''[[DM of the Rings]]'' strip, where the players come across the doors to the Mines of Moria, completely ignore the riddle and instead rattle off several increasingly ludicrous ways of
* In ''[[Ars Magica]]'', this is part of the theme of House Tytalus, and part of the background has an apprentice to a mage challenged, as his final exam, to open a box which his master has spent a long time enchanting. After gearing up, and throwing every spell at it that he had, the apprentice kneels in front of his master, acknowledging that he was not ready to be a full mage. His master then walks over to the box and pulls the lid open. He hadn't locked it.
* That door magically reinforced, locked, and likely to have a trap on it? No problem. Smash through the wall next to it.
== Video Games ==
* In ''[[
▲* In ''[[Portal 2 (Video Game)|Portal 2]]'', there is a point in which Wheatley must "hack" open a door. He tells you to turn around, then smashes the window, allowing Chell to portal herself into there.
** He does the same thing when attempting a "manual override" on a wall.
* In ''[[
* At the end of Brog's segment of ''[[Zork: Grand Inquisitor]]'', he is confronted with a complicated puzzle guarding the Skull of Yoruk. After making a valiant effort to solve the puzzle, the solution presents itself in the form of smashing the cage open with a wooden plank.
** Also, when stuck on the tech support hotline from hell (literally), you can copy down and work through the complicated set of rules to figure out which buttons to press... or just cast the "Simplify complex directions" spell [[Chekhov's Boomerang|left over from a previous puzzle.]]
* In ''[[Second Sight]]'' at the end of the game, the [[Big Bad]] hides behind bullet/psi-proof glass. {{spoiler|Too bad the frame wasn't psi-proof as well.}}
* The fictional [http://syndicate.lubie.org/swars/html/swars_book_cataclysm.php Book of Cataclysms] from ''[[Syndicate
{{quote|
* From ''[[Ratchet and Clank Going Commando]]'', we get this exchange when the duo comes across an upgraded wrench in a glass container:
{{quote|Clank: It says, "Use wrench to break glass."
Ratchet: *Pulls back his wrench*
Clank: Hang on. *Looking at a smaller glass case with a rock inside* This one says, "Use rock to break glass to get wrench to break glass to get rock." Oooh! I love logic puzzles! Let's see, if you break the--
''SMASH''
Ratchet: *Having broken open the case with his own wrench* Solved it.|Victory music plays-}}
** In the same game, while not a real puzzle, Planet Joba contains multiple doors with switches wired to them, but the doors often have enemies behind them, and a smart player will have to prepare themselves with an appropriate weapon so that they can find a switch and react in time in order to defeat the resulting attacking enemies. An even smarter player will just hop on a nearby turret, blast open the door, and then blast the enemies inside.
* At the climax of ''[[Guilty Gear|Guilty Gear 2: Overture]]'', {{spoiler|Sol has to analyze and deactivate the Key before it can unlock the Cube while his party tries to hold off Valentine. After he accomplishes this, he reveals that even though his analysis was going well, he got bored and decided to just break the Key instead (this also has the beneficial effect of making it so that the same Key can never be used again).}}
* This is Adell's modus operandi in ''[[Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories]]''. He even lampshades it at one point by solving a complex geopuzzle in no time when he explains that it's not that he can't think, it's that it's usually faster to just beat your problems into submission.
* At one point in ''[[Evil Dead|Evil Dead: Hail to the King]]'', Ash comes upon a locked door guarded by what seems to the worst puzzle in the game yet. The game changes perspective to the standard, pre-rendered "puzzle screen" and the instructions tell you to find seven rare earth elements and then balance them against each other by their specific weight to open the door. Then Ash suddenly jumps in, aims his trusty shotgun at the wall-mounted puzzle and simply shoots the door open instead.
* In ''[[Mass Effect]]'', a sidequest has you trying to stop a rogue AI from self-destructing. You can use your computer skills to disable the AI before the self-destruct finishes warming up...or you can just shoot it a few times. Granted, the brute force approach is the least beneficial option, as while it's guaranteed to work, it deprives you of the large sum of credits the AI had stored in its system.
* Level 18 of ''[[
* Many doors and security terminals in ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]]'' can be simply bashed open or blown up, but this yields less experience.
** The room before the final boss in KotOR 1 has a locked door that will unlock after you deactivate six droid generators, by using the parts from the droids they create. Alternately, you can just bash the door a couple of times and skip the whole problem.
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* See also ''[[Tom Clancy]]'s [[Splinter Cell]]: Chaos Theory.'' Locks can either be slowly but quietly unlocked, or Sam can cut through them with his blade. This makes a lot of noise, and enemies are smart enough to know when doors have been tampered with.
** In the same game, in the "Displace" level, Sam has to get codes from a laptop by accessing it wirelessly. This would require Sam to stalk the men carrying the laptop. Or he could just use his gadgets to take them down by force.
{{quote|
* This is pretty much the defining characteristic of Johnny Gat from ''[[Saints Row]]''. Presented with any intelligent, well-worked-out plan, his own suggestion is invariably to simply kill everyone in the general vicinity until the problem goes away. This isn't for ease or effectiveness; he just loves to kill people.
* ''[[Devil May Cry]]'': Dante, while trying to return to town in his section of the fourth game, comes across a board game/puzzle that Nero had to stay and waste his time with previously in the Cathedral's basement. A statue of Dante and the die appear prompting him to play through with it to leave the room. Deciding not to waste his time while poison gas slips through the room, Dante slices the die in two, ending (and somehow winning) the game prematurely.
* In the ''[[Fallout: New Vegas]]'' DLC ''Old World Blues'', a challenge/experiment involves securing a document without being spotted by patrolling robots. One solution is to destroy the robots, then start the test. Likewise, a later part of the test involves getting past tripwires in the same test. You can disable those before (or during) the test then walk right through them. The latter two portions of the test can't be cheated, though.
* Take ''[[Video Game/The Legend Of Zelda Twilight Princes|The Legend Of Zelda Twilight Princes]]'' - early on in the fifth dungeon, you have to deal with ice by aiming stationary cannons with hidden cannonballs at it, carefully avoiding it, and so on. Later on, you can pull out your Ball and Chain and go to town smashing it.
** This also comprises the entire second half of the Temple of Time in the same game. The entire gimmick for the area is that you have to traverse the temple in order to find a statue, bring it back down to the first level, and position it in the correct place in order to unlock the way to the boss. Going up to retrieve said statue, you have to deal with tedious puzzles involving sliding gates that are controlled by specifically-placed switches. However, once you get the statue, it turns out that it's also equipped with a [[Drop the Hammer|big honking hammer]] that you can use to just bash the gates down (along with any other monsters in your path) on the trip back down.
* Done in the ''[[Penumbra (
* ''[[Red Faction]]'' was pretty much sold on this premise alone. It boasted a real-time environment damage-modeling system called GeoMod that actually took rocket fights to their logical conclusion, which was completely wasted buildings. It was actually ''necessary'' to blow holes in walls with grenades and mines at some points in order to progress. One of the taglines on the back of the box was "Can't find the key? Make your own door." Coming from the world of FPSes where a [[BFG]][[Doom|9000]] blast could lay waste to every ounce of organic tissue in a 100x100 room but a series of 10 of them couldn't even put a scratch on a door, a lot of gamers found it refreshing to be able to say "Screw the red key" and blast a hole in the adjoining wall instead.
** ...and then found themselves feeling ripped off once the game started throwing completely indestructible buildings and doors their way at around halfway through the game.
** Relatedly, ''[[
* In ''[[Neverwinter Nights 2]]: Mask of the Betrayer'', there is a puzzle consisting of two rooms, each with a mixture of fire and ice mephits randomly flying around. Your task is to put all fire mephits in one room and all ice mephits in the other one. You can carefully time openings of the door between the rooms... or you can use an obelisk to kill them all, and then drag their corpses around. You get less XP the brutal way, though.
* In ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]'', the boss Wrexsoul can be rather complicated to defeat; you're ''supposed'' to kill your own party until he emerges from hiding, and then commence attacking him. Or, you know, you could just cast X-Zone on him, that works just as well.
* In ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro
* In ''[[Dungeon Crawl]]'', there are labyrinths that pose a significant threat to under-prepared adventurers. While they feature almost no enemies, the entrance disappears shortly after discovering it, leaving little to no time to prepare for the maze itself. The maze can often be long and elaborate: The autoexplore feature is disabled while you're inside, the game doesn't remember any map tiles for long after you're out of view of them, and the clues to the location of your goal are obscure at best. Worst of all, the maze regularly shifts itself, rearranging and making it that much harder to solve. Finally, while wands of digging do exist, and can be used by a canny player to help reach the goal, they will only have an effect on the weaker rock walls, and not the harder metal and stone walls that compose much of the maze. But it is still possible for a player to cut the knot, with just the right spell: Lee's Rapid Deconstruction can tear down nearly any wall with high enough spell power, allowing you to bypass parts of the maze with a bit of effort.
* Inverted in ''[[Professor Layton and The Lost Future]]'', naturally. Thugs are expected to use good-old violence to stop interlopers... but here, they toss a puzzle your way instead! Is it any wonder that the next game introduced [[Action Girl|Emmy]] to deal with thugs?
* In one mission of [[SWAT 4]], you can choose to enter a building through the back door. However, the door has metal bars on it to prevent its use. Instead of removing the screws, bolts, or whatever held it together, the team simply attaches a hook and rope to a car and the metal bars and have it pulled away from the weak bricks. This is probably [[Truth in Television]] given the amount of research and realism the company put into that game.
* The reason Steve from ''[[Minecraft]]'' is able to make many of the [[Nintendo Hard]] ''[[Super Meat Boy]]'' levels extremely easy is because he can literally mine through the level to the end.
* ''[[
* In ''[[
* In ''[[Call of Duty]] 2'', during the Battle of Stalingrad campaign, you get a bunch of Germans barricade themselves in a building. Instead of trying to talk them into surrendering or trying to beat down the door, the commander simply orders you to place charges on the building supports. As the building collapses, he screams: "This is how you negotiate with fascists!"
== Web Comics ==
* In ''[[
▲* In ''[[Eight Bit Theater (Webcomic)|8-bit Theater]]'', in a mystic castle, Fighter is subjected to the trial of sloth, wherein the trial monster attempts to get Fighter to overcome his reliance on stagnant sword skills, and instead use his brain in combat for once. Fighter promptly slaughters the monster, stating that his brain told him that it was faster that way.
** [http://www.nuklearpower.com/2003/12/04/episode-359-flawless-victories/ Obstacle course? Mo' like ka-boom course.]
** Black Mage makes a reference to the [[Trope Namer]] when confronted with a sealed, metal door with a confusing riddle on it.
{{quote|
''* TINKTINKTINKTINKTINKTINK* '' }}
* In ''[[
** S13 took a page from her book. When robots ran a rescue mission into an area screened with ether syphon buoys (with [[Reality Warper|Zimmy's power]] running unchecked inside), they put a ''torpedo'' into one buoy and entered through that place once fireworks stopped. A few pages later, Renard in [[Big Badass Wolf]] form crushed with teeth the talisman blocking Antimony's abilities - though he noted that this ''was'' a contest of raw power (and Renard apparently counts as a major mythological entities one tier below gods).
* [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0327.html This] ''[[The Order of the Stick
{{quote|
** Beautifully inverted by the encounter with the hydra, which they defeated by decapitating it until it <s>regenerated so many heads it could no longer hold them all up to fight</s> didn't have enough blood for all the heads it regenerated. The group outwitted the test of brawn and bullied their way through the test of brains, leaving the test of heart... {{spoiler|a medical examination}}
** Xykon may be the patron saint of this trope. "And now I see that planning doesn't matter. Strategy doesn't matter. Only two things matter: Force in as great a concentration as you can muster, and style. And in a pinch, style can slide."
** Vaarsuvius's solution to preventing [[Smug Snake|Daimyo Kubota]] from weaseling out of his trial is to [[Murder Is the Best Solution|Disintegrate him and scatter the ashes.]]
*** It's more like a solution to the problem that Kubota was distracting from V, Elan, and Dukon's attempts to reunite with the rest of the group. V had no clue who the heck Kubota was, so preventing him from escaping justice was just a happy side-effect.
* ''[[Adventurers
* In ''[[No Rest for The Wicked (
* ''[[
* In [http://lfgcomic.com/page/207 this] ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[
** Tempts Fate is challenged with a devilishly complicated riddle by a talking door, and the wrong answer will unleash horrible death. Tempts Fate elects not to answer at all, and just opens the door, which wasn't locked. After all, it never said he had to give a ''right'' answer either.
** At one point, tempts is confronted with a series of armor piercing arrow launchers that will kill anything attempting to cross the room. He jumps into the air, activating his magic belt, and his metal skin deflects them. The Rant Golem picks up a bit of sand, which is the solution, and passes by completely unharmed. Oddly, he knew the solution ahead of time, and but was bored.
* Faevv in [[Juathuur]] [https://web.archive.org/web/20190814164920/http://oneway.juathuur.com/1/?strip_id=111 thinks like a shadow-user.]
* In ''[[Bob and George]]'', a handful of Dr. Cossack's Robot Masters, lead by [[Death Is a Slap
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20150428205504/http://www.airshipentertainment.com/buckcomic.php?date=20090416 Hyraxx opens] [https://web.archive.org/web/20150428205501/http://www.airshipentertainment.com/buckcomic.php?date=20090418 a door.]
* [[Captain SNES|A Superscope]] [http://www.captainsnes.com/2004/01/29/416-it-counts-as-a-set-of-masterwork-lockpicks-ya-know/ used to pick a tough lock]. [[How We Got Here|Alex's captor suggests that a]] [[MacGuffin]] [[We Have the Keys|Alex possessed at the time would've been the logical solution.]] [[It Got Worse|Alex agrees (with hindsight) that he should've considered it.]]
* ''[[
** The [http://xkcd.com/399/ travelling salesman problem].
* ''[[
{{quote|
'''Schlock:''' Pronto, how about you finish that sentence for me?
'''Pronto:''' Umm... "Just shut blast door... Data center... Can't get through..."Without blasting?
'''Schlock:''' And that's why they call it a blast door. }}
* ''[[Keychain of Creation]]'' had a [http://keychain.patternspider.net/archive/koc0145.html fiendishly complicated lock].
* ''[[Hero in Training]]'': [http://www.herointrainingcomic.com/?date=2007-12-22 these]{{Dead link}} [https://web.archive.org/web/20130527000230/http://www.herointrainingcomic.com/?date=2007-12-27 strips].
* ''[[Rusty and Co.]]'' had [[The Ditz|Madeline]] after [http://rustyandco.com/comic/level-6-35/ a brief struggle] with the classic (pre-school) puzzle solving it her own way (on the next page, and then two pages later).
== Web Original ==
* ''[[
* When confronting the [[Temple of Doom|Temple of All Dooms]] in ''[[Journey Quest]]'' Glorion seems intent on traversing the whole dungeon this way.
* [[Whateley Universe]] example: in "Boston Brawl 2", the Necromancer creates a horrific rip in time-space that the mages try to magically repair. Instead, Bladedancer just slices through it with Destiny's Wave.
* [[Atop the Fourth Wall
** ''Silent Hill: Dying Inside'' alternate ending: His door is covered with unbreakable chains (as per ''[[Silent Hill 4]]'')? Yeah, well, the ''[[Myopic Architecture|wall]]'' [[Myopic Architecture|they're attached to is plasterboard]]
** ''Silent Hill: Dead/Alive'': There's a paper bag in front of his door that can't be moved without "something needlessly complex and crafted from several parts"? Screw that, he's just going to shoot it.
** By the point of ''Silent Hill: The Grinning Man'', the soup cans have gotten wise. Linkara finds boxes blocking his door and threatens to turn them to ashes if they don't
== Western Animation ==
* In an early episode of ''[[The Venture Bros]]'', the boys and some [[Harmless Villain|fake pirates]] are being harassed by the ghost of a former pilot named [[David Bowie|Major Tom]]. The boys contact Dr. Orpheus, the team sorceror, who tries to [[Ghostly Goals|put Tom's soul to rest]]. It doesn't work. Plan B? Brock arrives and defeats the ghost by ''[[
* A ''[[Popeye]]'' cartoon ending where Olive Oyl is tied to a train track. After trying for a few seconds to untie her, Popeye simply decides to punch the train, which instantly stops and falls apart. It was so famous that it was repeated several times in several different episodes.
* Nearly every time a locked door and keypad appears in ''[[The Secret Show]]'', there is a request to enter a complicated and time consuming code or input, to which the heroes usually respond by blowing up the keypad, [[Destruction Equals Off Switch|which always inexplicably opens the door]].
* In one Ludwig Von Drake cartoon, Drake explains his method of getting rid of an annoying but probably fixable experiment; he teleports it to who-knows-where with another annoying but probably fixable experiment.
* In one episode of ''[[
* In an episode of ''[[The Simpsons]]'', Homer uses an ancient map to escape the plant so he can sneak away to a tour of the Duff brewery. He encounters a giant spider and consults the map, which says, "To escape the spider's curse, simply quote a Bible verse." When Homer can't think of any Bible verses, he throws a rock at it and knocks it out.
** One Treehouse of Horror special puts Bart and Lisa are in Fairy Tale Land. When Bart comes across the Three Bears' porridge, he (of course) discovers that one is too hot and the other is too cold. He remarks "It doesn't take a genius to figure this out." and proceeds to ''[[Crowning Moment of Funny|pour the contents of one bowl into the other]]''.
* In the [[Street Fighter (
* In ''[[Metajets]]'', In "Under the Ice," when Vector says it'll take a while to find the right access code to open the door to the abandoned research facility, Burner just blows the door open with a good shot from his snowmobile cannon.
* ''[[The Powerpuff Girls]]'' used this once. When Him gives the girls a [[Train Problem|"Train A is travelling..."]] problem with real trains that'll collide if they don't stop them, Blossom first tries to solve it with an abacus, then realizes, "We're superheroes! Let's just find the trains and stop them!"
** Movie example: The girls play an [[Does Not Know His Own Strength|unintentionally]] destructive game of tag. Blossom and Bubbles hide on the top of a building dozens of blocks away from Buttercup. Buttercup snaps and '''tears''' through all those buildings to get to them.
* This is featured in ''[[Toy Story (franchise)|Toy Story]] 2'' when Buzz and his friends are trying to rescue Woody. When asked how they're going to get past a grate to attack who they think are evil toys torturing Woody, Buzz says, "[[Use Your Head]]!" [[Gilligan Cut|Cut to Rex being used as a battering ram]], screaming, "But I don't want to use my head!" before crashing through. In a fake outtake scene, the grate was still screwed on by accident, which had predictable results.
* Optimus Prime, ''[[Transformers Generation 1]]'', in the episode "Day of the Machines":
{{quote|
'''Optimus''': Fortunately, I know a delicate lockpicking technique. [BOOM!] }}
* ''[[Iron Man: Armored Adventures]]'': Tony's classmate Happy winds up in the armor and has to deal with a bomb about to go off. Tony doesn't know how to defuse the bomb...so Happy just snaps it in half.
* During Gaston's [[Villain Song]] in Disney's ''[[Beauty and
* ''[[Batman:
** His debut episode involves a re-creation of a video game maze, which Batman [[Dungeon Bypass|bypasses]] by hacking the controls of the flying guardian; later, when faced with a robot minotaur, Bats orders the same guardian to ram it.
** In "What is Reality?", he lures the heroes into a virtual reality simulation by trapping Commissioner Gordon's consciousness inside it. When they get to the center, they discover that their goal is inside a [[Lawyer
{{quote|
* Xanatos of ''[[
* In ''[[
{{quote|
'''Buford:''' [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|I will in about twenty minutes.]] }}
* In the beginning of one episode of ''[[
* In the second season premiere of [[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
* In ''[[Justice League Unlimited]]'', [[The Question]] is looking at a locked glass door to a building with a key card lock. After a few seconds of inspecting the lock, he simply walks off screen for a few seconds, comes back with a potted tree and uses it to smash through the glass door and calmly walks in. Seen [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzlz_3NWKZI&feature=related here].
* A [[Monster of the Week|Supervillain of the Week]] on one episode of ''[[
** That part would require him to actually grab Batman, and we all know how hard [[Badass Normal|that would be]].
== Real Life ==
* One of the best ways to disarm a nuclear bomb is ''to shoot it''. While this is incredibly counter-intuitive, most modern nuclear weapons operate in such a way that the desired nuclear yield will only occur if the high-explosive plates around it all fire at the exact same instant with an acceptable error in the fractions of seconds. So if one plate goes off too early, the bomb won't go critical, and the explosion will be...smaller. And still radioactive, but considerably less destructive.
** Also works for conventional explosives as well. Skilled bombmakers will include all sorts of intricate anti-tampering mechanisms to prevent the warhead being disarmed, but firing a .50-calibre bullet through the timer almost never fails; at worst you'll set the thing off prematurely, but if you know the bomb's there then you can clear the blast radius before the EOD team arrive.
* In the military, when opening a door in or around a combat zone that has not been previously entered one must first check for booby-traps, then carefully open the door, checking it for traps along the way, unless there is any chance whatsoever of a hostile inside the room, in which case you blow the hinges to hell with 12 gauge slugs or C4 then kick the door the rest of the way down.
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