Difficulty Spike/Playing With
Basic Trope: The game abruptly becomes much harder.
- Straight: Hornet Hole is harder than the two levels preceding it, Hailfire Peaks and Jungle Japes.
- Exaggerated: Hornet Hole is the hardest level in the entire game, immediately after the tutorial, Green Hill Zone and first level, Dream Land
- Up to Eleven: The tutorial is already the hardest level in the entire game.
- Justified: The Big Bad, knowing there is a prophecy that a child would on this day begin his quest to destroy him, decided to proactively send all of his minions to attack the hero, starting with his army of attack hornets.
- Inverted: Hornet Hole is much easier than Hailfire Peaks and Jungle Japes, and is considered to be a Breather Level.
- Subverted: Thoguh Hornet Hole is the second to last level in the game, before the final level, Sinister Subway, it is significantly easier than it would be expected.
- Double Subverted: Hornet Hole is really a Breather Level. It is meant to give you a break before fighting the giant robotic flaming double daggered panda ninjas of doom on the Sinister Subway.
- Parodied: At the start of a level, Hornet Hole looks easy. You can see green grass and happy bunnies all around, and the end of level point is within a few feet of the level's start. Then the Difficulty Spike falls from the sky and hits the ground, destroying the pristine landscape, killing the little bunnies, and making the level endpoint fall deep into a flaming fissure below.
- Deconstructed: Hornet Hole is so difficult that no one is able to beat it. Reviewers score it poorly because of its difficulty, and sales plummet. The game falls off the radar.
- Reconstructed: Hardcore gamers, however, love the game specifically because of Hornet Hole's difficulty, making the game a profitable Cult Classic.
- Zig Zagged: Schizophrenic Difficulty.
- Averted: The game remains the same difficulty throughout all the levels. Alternatively, the difficulty rise is pretty gradual.
- Enforced: The game director is tired of pussy games, such as Wii Music, and decides to spike the difficulty...right after level two.
- Lampshaded: After passing through the Hornet Hole, The Hero asks why everything got so hard all of a sudden.
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: The Hero says Screw This, I'm Outta Here and skips around the Hornet Hole using a Warp Zone or some such.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
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