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{{trope}}
[[File:beat maze the easy way 3020.jpg|frame| Screw it. I want that cheese NOW.]]
{{quote|''"Obstacle course? Mo' like ka-boom course."''
|'''Black Mage'''|''[[8-Bit Theater]]'', "[http://www.nuklearpower.com/2003/12/04/episode-359-flawless-victories/ Episode 359: Flawless Victories]"}}
So the villain is feeling quite secure in their dungeon/castle/tower/fun house/generic headquarters. The path to their location is filled with [[The Maze|a maze of twisty little passages, all alike]], each filled with [[Death Trap|death traps]] and [[Elite Mooks]] that would quickly kill the protagonists, or at least inconvenience them by a lot and let the villain escape if they need to.
... but the heroes just fly up to the top of the tower where they are. Or [[Bullethole Door|blast a shortcut]] to their place (not coincidentally, blasting the villain in the process as well). Or enter an overlooked route. All that dungeon preparation? Wasted. If the villain hasn't been taken out yet, they might complain about how these things were supposed to go.
Makes players of [[Role-Playing Game|RPGs]], [[Action Adventure]], and other such games with dungeons wish they could do something as easy. Occasionally, they can, though it usually isn't intentional. This usually results in [[Sequence Breaking]].
Heroes that find another way to get past a maze may also count. Basically, the Dungeon Bypass is where the hero takes a shortcut instead of whatever the intended path was (possibly exploiting [[Myopic Architecture]] in the process). If used in combat, this can be in some contexts a case of [[Fighting Dirty]]. This is a [[Sub-Trope]] of [[Fake Skill]].
[[Inversion]]: In many [[Tower Defence]] games, it's the ''enemies'' who use this on you! [[Airborne Mook]]s will fly over your maze of towers, unlike other mooks who will have to traverse it while getting the stuffing blasted out of them on the way.
Compare [[Take a Third Option]] (any generic option of going along an unintended route), [[Cutting the Knot]] (for ''making'' the shortcut), and [[Easy Level Trick]] (pulling this stunt on any sort of level in a video game).
{{examples}}
== Advertising ==
* An advert for jeans saw a man and a woman running through a series of walls, and by extension, rooms. Parodied in the title sequence of early series of ''Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway''.
== Anime and Manga ==
* In ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS]]'', when Quattro learns that the heroine has found out where she is, she tries to console herself on the fact she's in the core of the ship while Nanoha's in the Throne Room, two places separated by many doors, swarms of drones, and a huge maze of corridors. She then notices Nanoha pointing [[BFG|her staff]] at the floor and powering up for a ''Blaster 3'' [[Wave Motion Gun|Divine Buster]], and promptly realizes that she is ''screwed''. Made even more impressive by the fact the ENTIRE ship is covered by an anti-magic field... So the beam had to be also powerful enough to resist the anti-magic effect.
{{quote|'''Quattro:''' She's going to just blast through the walls? [[Oh Crap|Oh dear mother of God...!]]}}
** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBArXz3cWos The relevant scene.]
*** [http://nanofate.us/sites/default/files/imagecache/node-gallery-display/f648eaa2be7a6d52b874fdeb2efc1aec.png The full example picture] features two other examples. Fate, being an obedient good girl, just solves the maze, while Hayate follows the literal directions but not the spirit, and walks around the ''outside'' of the maze to the other exit. Hey, [[Loophole Abuse|it never said]] you had to ''enter'' the maze.
** This is [[Foreshadowing|foreshadowed]] in the very first episode of Strikers, where Nanoha uses Divine Buster to break through the walls when rescuing Subaru from a fire.
*** Teana repeats the feat in ''[[Sound Stage X]]'', {{spoiler|having learned Starlight Breaker from Nanoha}}.
* In the [[Manga]] version of ''[[The Slayers]]'', the villainess had filled a five-story building with mages and warriors capable of matching Lina. Instead of going through them, Lina just flies straight to the top of the tower where the villainess was.
** One of the [[OAV
* ''[[Hunter X Hunter]]'' did this at one point during the Hunter Exam arc. Gon and his companions (plus Tonpa "The Rookie Killer", a [[Smug Snake]] who was acting like [[The Load]] on purpose) are near the exit of a tower full of traps when they come across a branch. The "easy path" goes straight to the exit, but the door to the easy path will only open if they leave two members of their group behind and chained to the wall. The "hard path" will allow all of them to exit, but will take too long for them to make the deadline for escaping the tower. However, the two exits are next to each other, so after some thought and a lot of effort, they manage to break through the wall separating the easy path and the hard path.
** Gon also did this in a later story arc. He and his friend had been manipulated into a mansion by a tough enemy talented in anticipating their movements (and who knew where the doors were). The heroic duo started kicking through the walls...
* In ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist (
* In ''[[
** See the scene from the animated adaption [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdNN81bioHc here].
* Both subverted and played straight with the Maze Card in ''[[
* Occurs in ''[[
** Earlier, in the Alabasta arc, Sanji invokes this trope by realizing the
* In a short story of ''[[Suzumiya Haruhi]]'', the SOS Brigade are stuck acting out a typical Medieval RPG in simulated space. Not only do they bypass a lot of dungeons and battles (by threatening an NPC, no less), but the biggest use of this trope is found when they reach the final dungeon, still at level one and probably lacking all the key items and skills they need to beat the last boss. The solution? Mikuru accidentally casts two doomsday level spells at once, completely demolishing the entire castle and the [[Big Bad]] with it. [[Fission Mailed|And the hostages they were supposed to rescue.]]
* In ''[[The Cat Returns]]'', the King's henchmen put up fake walls in a maze to make sure the heroes can't find their way to the end. However, the Baron realizes a wall is fake, and the kicks it
** Muta ''attempts'' one of those by climbing on the maze walls, but it was a ''lot'' less successful. {{quote|
'''[[The Hero|Haru]]''': Muta, you're cheating.
'''[[Cats Are Snarkers|Muta]]''': Give me a break, like you think I'm gonna get in trouble.
'''Guard''': ''HE'S CHEEEEEAATING!!!''
'''Muta''': She's gonna rub this in my face, isn't she?
'''Muta''': Again I'm tricked into being bait!}}
* In ''[[Yu Yu Hakusho]]'', Hiei, Kurama and Kuwabara give Yusuke a boost to help him reach a window in Suzaku's tower on top of Maze Castle, enabling him to fight Suzaku while they work their way up to him.
* In ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! R]]'', Seto Kaiba does this twice. First, he lands on the roof of the building in his Blue-Eyes Jet rather than Duel his way through the lower floors. As he Duels the first card professor, Mokuba hacks into the security system as unlocks the door, making the Duel for the keycard superfluous. Kaiba announces he simply needed a warm-up before Dueling Yako.
* The only way anyone gets around in ''[[
== Comic Books ==
* In ''[[Superman|Superman: Ending Battle]]'', Superman gets trapped inside ''[[Living Ship|Bunny: The Living Ship]]'' by Hank Henshaw, the Cyborg Superman. Trying to bust out is nearly impossible, because the inside is an ever-shifting dimension. Supes fires his heat vision at the wall and keeps pouring it on. Since metal conducts heat, the heat travels everywhere and the ship overheats and shuts down.
{{quote|'''Cyborg:''' You're already twenty miles deeper into the ship than when you started... Make that forty. I can fold ''Bunny'' back in on herself indefinitely, a technorganic Moebius Strip. We're going to be at this for a very, very long time.}}
== Fan Works ==
* In ''[[
== Film ==
* When [[WALL-E]] wants to power up, he rolls outside and opens his solar panels. When EVE is in a hurry and wants to power WALL-E up, she blows a hole in the ceiling with her plasma cannon. Note that the door was open and not five feet away.
** It's also worth noting that "blow something up with my plasma cannon" is EVE's [[When All You Have Is a Hammer|default problem-solving technique]].
* At the end of ''
* Lampshaded in ''[[The
{{quote|
'''Yzma''': Ah...uh... how did we, Kronk?
'''Kronk''': ''(pulls down a map of the dotted lines)'' Well ya got me. By all accounts it doesn't make sense. }}
* The Xenomorphs pull this one on the heroes in ''[[Alien (franchise)|Aliens]]''. After the humans supposedly barricade all the doors and air ducts, the Aliens just climb above the dropped ceiling.
* Subverted in ''[[Labyrinth]]''. Shortly after Sarah enters the labyrinth, she asks directions from a small sentient caterpillar. "Don't go that way. ''Never'' go that way," he tells her, at which she thanks him and heads off in the opposite direction. When she's gone: "If she'd gone that way, she'd'a gone straight to that castle."
** Which turns out to be good advice as Sarah probably wouldn't have succeeded without going through a [[Hero's Journey]], learning how to defeat the goblin king and assembling her [[Five-Man Band]] first.
* In ''[[Casino Royale]]'', while the mook is going through a building under construction with [[Le Parkour]], [[James Bond (film)|James Bond]] just goes through walls, shoots down an elevated platform for it to fall...
* In ''[[X-Men: The Last Stand]]'', both [[Intangible Man|Kitty Pryde]] and [[The Juggernaut|Juggernaut]] take the direct route to Leech's chamber. Kitty runs through the walls by phasing, while Juggernaut runs through them by ''running through them''.
* In ''[[Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan]]'', it's not entirely clear whether Kirk is using this or the [[Take a Third Option]] tactic when he reprograms [[Unwinnable Training Simulation|The Kobayashi Maru]] into a winnable scenario.
** One of the published books shows what happened during his test. According to it, he reprogrammed the test so it was possible to talk his way out of the fight, so it is a little of both.
** [[Star Trek (
** Of course, [[Alternate Continuity|both could be correct.]]
** Interestingly, ''Starfleet Academy'' (which was released about 10 years before ''[[Star Trek (
* Averted in [[The Lord of the Rings (
* [[Played for Laughs]] in [[Robin Hood: Men in Tights]]. Little John stands on a bridge and demands Robin fight him to pass. Achoo points out that the river beneath "ain't exactly the Mississippi". Or even a ''river'', for that matter; "stream" would be generous.
== Literature ==
*
* In ''[[Harry Potter and
** [[Fridge Logic|Why couldn't he just do a repeat of the first task, again?]]
**
* In ''[[Emberverse|Dies the Fire]]'' by [[
* From [[Loophole Abuse]]: In one of the ''[[Dinotopia]]'' spin-off novels, the protagonists find themselves in a Lost City inhabited by Troodon samurai ([[Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot|just go with it]]). The Troodon challenge the humans to different contests to win citizenship, one of which is a race through an obstacle course. The [[Most Writers Are Human|human]], Andrew, wins by bypassing the course and just running down the strip of land between his course and his opponent's, because there [[Loophole Abuse|isn't a rule]] against it. This becomes very popular, and although the rules are immediately changed, "Pulling an Andrew" begins to occur in other activities around the city as well.
* In [[Sandy Mitchell]]'s ''[[Ciaphas Cain]]'' novel ''[[The Caves Of Ice]]'', Cain and the fireteam he's deployed with come across a tunnel with recognizable signs of being carved by an ancient civilization ( {{spoiler|specifically, the Necrons}}). Cain immediately orders the tunnel to be sealed off with explosives. When he returns to the spot some time later, however, he finds that a hapless ambull has tunneled around the rubble.
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** Not so much "secret access points" as a simple attempt to leave the maze through the ceiling (by removing enough bricks of the vaulted ceiling). They were aiming for the outside, but they were happy when they found the maintenance corridor.
*** Well those "Secret access points" ''did'' exist, the heroes just decided to take a short-cut, to get to the short-cut.
* There is a Gothic [[Romance Novel]] called ''[[Touch Not The Cat]].'' A maze is a [[Leitmotif]] in this book, and the climax is when the [[Villain
* In the [[Beverly Cleary]] [[Young Adult]] novel ''[[Ralph S Mouse]]'', the kids build a maze for Ralph to run. Ralph climbs on top of the walls to look for the cheese, to the annoyance of the kids (who were [[Completely Missing the Point|building the maze to see how smart Ralph was in the first place]]).
* The protagonist of ''The Ion War'' was sent, as a test, into a maze -- ''inside a furnace'', with a five-minute timer on the device protecting him from the heat. He discovered that the walls weren't anchored, and toppled them like dominoes. He still wound up having to do an [[Indy Hat Roll]] to get to safety before the protection deactivated.
* ''[[
* In one of the ''[[Star Wars]]'' [[Expanded Universe]] novels, Han Solo remarks that he "never saw a maze that couldn't be greatly simplified with a good blaster".
** This was probably inspired by Leia's way of getting herself and her rescuers out of a very tight situation in ''A New Hope''. Granted, it landed them in a garbage masher, but it still counts for something.
* As [[Bolo
* In ''[[Posleen War Series|When The Devil Dances]]'' and ''Hell's Faire'', the "Screaming Meemie" units accompanying the 7000 ton "Bun Bun", tend to take full advantage of the passage of the SheVa smashing everything in its path flat. The resultant path is still impassable for wheeled vehicles, but for the tanks<ref>* the MetalStorm turrets replace the regular turrets on [[Yanks With Tanks|M-1 Abrams tanks]], whose hulls are left unchanged save for the turret interface</ref> traveling through the impressions that each section of SheVa tread leaves isn't a problem.
* In [[Codex Alera]] the Vord bypass an impenetrable Canim fortification by tunneling underneath it to attack them from behind. It took the Canim completely off guard because the Vord had enough [[We Have Reserves|reserves]] to continuously attack the front while tunneling behind.
* In [[Esther Friesner]]'s ''Elf Defense'', our heroes are stuck in a [[Mobile Maze|magical semi-sentient hedgemaze]], which has just separated the college professor being pursued by a dragon from the elven prince who actually knows how to ''fight'' a dragon. No problem: the Welsh au pair calmly picks up a sword and proceeds to chop her way through the first hedge in the way. The maze, not being stupid, immediately opens a clear path for her.
* In [[The Mysterious Benedict Society]], the final test which the main characters are put through in order to qualify for the mission is a maze of identical rooms. Reynie identifies a pattern of arrows (there are several different arrows in each room, each pointing different directions), while Sticky blunders through at random, memorizes the route instantly, and completes it perfectly when he tries again, but Kate simply opens up a heating duct and crawls straight through.
* In Robert Asprin's ''[[
* In [[Percy Jackson and The Olympians|Percy Jackson and the Battle of the Labyrinth]], both the heroes and the villains are searching for [[MacGuffin|Ariadne's String]], which allows a
* Brandon Sanderson's ''[[Warbreaker]]'' Vasher uses Nightblood to demolish walls in the royal palace in order to reach his target Denth. It's not a straight example because it's not a dungeon but the effect is the same.
* In ''[[Who Moved My Cheese?]]'', Hem and Haw chisel holes in the wall of Cheese Station C to see if more cheese is behind the wall.
* Some of the heroes in [[Andre Norton]]'s ''Sargasso of Space'' found their way to an alien maze surrounding the [[Space Pirate]]s' [[Interstellar Weapon|superweapon]] control room. Fortunately, the walls of the maze were three feet thick, so the good guys '''walked along the top'''.
== Live-Action TV ==
* Happens in the ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' episode "The Serpent's Lair":
{{quote|'''Bra'tac:''' The shield generators are far below, there -- in the very bowels of the ship. We must climb down several decks, through the length of the ship. Then, taking our weapons, we must--
'''O'Neill:''' ''(shrugs and tosses grenades down the shaft; the generators explode; he looks back at Bra'tac)'' Grenades. }}
** In a later episode, Sam, Jonas Quinn and Jackson are trying to find the Eye of Ra, and have spent most of the episode puzzling out how to find the compartment it's in. When they do find the compartment, there's another set of locks... but they're running out of time, so Sam just blasts through it with her P90.
* ''[[Bones]]'' did this once. A real dead body was found in one of those Halloween haybale mazes, so Booth kicks the bales down and cuts a straight path to and from the parking lot. Apparently, he was the only one to even ''consider'' this, as everyone else appears rather shocked.
* Done in an episode of ''[[Knightmare]]''.
* From the ''[[
{{quote|
'''Kryten:''' Or we could use the teleporter. }}
** Again from ''Duct Soup''. The crew crawl through the ventilation shafts of ''Starbug'' after the ship apparently goes offline. {{spoiler|Kryten made sure the doors were functional but didn't explain this until they got back}}.
* The premier episode of ''[[Burn Notice]]'' has a drug dealer feeling secure behind his armoured, reinforced door. Narrator Michael [[
* In ''[[Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger vs. Space Sheriff Gavan:
== Music ==
* In "The Rapture of Ridley Walker" by [[Clutch]]:
{{quote|
No passage below the dungeon }}
== Oral Tradition, Folklore, Myths and Legends ==
* In [[Greek Mythology]], Theseus tied his string to the end of the maze, dropped it, and it rolled down, where he just followed it until it eventually led to the minotaur. While not technically a bypass, he did circumvent the whole dead ends thing that a maze is supposed to have.
** Except the Labyrinth is not a maze. It's a pair of interwoven paths, with one junction, so that one has no choice but to go toward the center, where the minotaur would presumably be. The idea of Theseus using string to find the way is probably apocryphal.
*** Aren't all myths apocryphal? Anyway, the unicursal (single path) Labyrinth is a design to simply represent the vastly more complex maze-like Labyrinth. Nothing in any of the myths depict it as anything other than a branching maze. [[That Other Wiki
* In some parts of Sweden, fishermen used to believe that every village was infested with little invisible gnomes, whose main desire was to get out on the sea. To do this, the gnomes would follow the villagers around. If a fisherman didn't get rid of the gnomes before going out in his boat, it would mean terrible bad luck. So how did they get rid of the gnomes? Easy:
* [[Older Than Feudalism]]: In ''[[
== Tabletop Games ==
=== Board Games ===
* ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' has several game mechanics that allow you to put your forces behind your opponent's lines, such as infiltrating, outflanking, and deep striking. The ''Apocalypse'' and ''Planetstrike'' supplements also provide special strategic assets and stratagems that can also help your forces bypass defensive lines. Also, if you happen to have fast skimmer transports, you can literally just ''fly'' over enemy lines.
=== Gamebooks ===
* This is actually the only way to beat the maze in the seventh ''[[Lone Wolf]]'' book, ''Castle Death''. One monster shorts out the overhead force field with its death throes, enabling you to climb up its corpse to the maintenance gantries. Trying to fight your way through the maze leads to certain death.
** Conversely, if you possess the proper skill, you can cheat in a ''different'' way—namely, when asked to pick one of two archways to pass through, you ignore them both and break through the weak spot in the wall ''between'' them, escaping the maze. Still, there is no "fair" way to beat the maze—all paths within the maze lead to those two arches, and both of those arches autokill the player if he chooses one.
=== Tabletop RPG ===
* ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]''
** The spell Passwall creates a temporary hole in a wall of your choice. A portable hole does much the same and a few other tricks. Another all-time utility spell is Dig. And wizards learn Disintegrate not only because it's save-or-die.
** A feared (by DMs) tactic is the "scry and die", in which the player characters use divination spells to locate the [[Big Bad]], then cast a teleport spell to ambush him wherever he happens to be, bypassing any and all elaborately prepared defenses he has set up. Such is the fate of those who don't use counter-measures adequate of the level of troubles they ask for, but it's a game balance problem - if defenses against magical ambushes are too easy to implement, you eventually lose the ability to spring those plot-convenient ambushes on your ''players''... Still, most countermeasures cover only specific effects and aren't convenient enough to be foolproof: for long-range divinations there are Non-detection and Mislead, items with nondetection effect and mundane means like lead sheets (for scrying) or running water (for Locate Creature), and Detect Scrying as early warning. There are a few protections against mind reading, too, though not in core rules.
*** 3.5 later released Anticipate Teleport as a 3rd level spell with a 24 hour duration to alleviate this problem. They also introduced the 6th level Greater Anticipate Teleport which actually makes the "scry and fry" tactic backfire by warning the target and delaying the teleporter's arrival for three rounds to give the target time to prepare.
*** Of course, one Mind Blank spell and it takes a caster with deity-level power to scry the subject. Of course, by the time you can easily afford Mind Blank or cast it yourself, you're not too far below epic level either.
*** At least, that's the earlier-edition attitude. Fourth edition concerns itself more with creating adventures specifically for the party and rather less with trying to build a world that has to make sense whether or not they're actually there to notice.
** In 3.5, all materials stronger than paper are allotted a hardness score, which dramatically reduces damage dealt to them. Weapons made out of Adamantine, however, ignore the hardness of objects unless they're built from materials equal in strength or stronger than Adamantine. Within the rules, and excepting another object made of adamantine, ''there are no such materials''. This makes tunneling through a stone wall with an Adamantine Battleaxe almost pathetically easy.
*** Obdurium appears in some supplemental materials and has a hardness of 30, which is really just obscene.
*** However, in fourth edition D&D, items and walls no longer have a hardness rating, which means that a weak but determined character can ''punch through them''.
** It is quite easy for PCs to end up rewarded for this: most strong doors are made up of an expensive material, so simply using "disable device" or other methods to take it off its hinges winds up quite profitable.
*** So much that the remake of ''[[Tomb of Horrors]]'' has replaced all of its Adamantine Doors with "Spell-Hardened Steel as Hard as Adamant, but loses its magic if you dismantled them."
** In [[Tomb of Horrors]] At least one group of adventurers has made it through without a single casualty by having a team of dwarves dig around the traps and obstacles with non-magical mining equipment over the course of several weeks. The writers planned for ethereal travel, melding into stone, magical defenses, teleportation, etc. but never expected an ordinary pickaxe and a group of patient, careful adventurers.
* Many RPGs have so many ways of doing this that it may be futile to try to list them all. There appear to be two main reasons for this: first, many games include countless different spells whose implications are often poorly thought out (though some of this is intentional). The second reason is many games try to write rules for every conceivable situation, including tunneling through a wall with a battle axe.
* ''[[Exalted]]'': Solars with the correct Charm can bypass locked doors by ''walking through them'', and more veteran ones can remove the walls by punching people through them. Meanwhile, those with dematerialization effects can just stroll through walls, and experienced Infernals can just load up Pellegrina's Fury and ''erode away everything in their path''. Of course, the point of ''Exalted'' isn't about whether the heroes ''can'' make it through the dungeon, it's about whether they ''should'', and how they intend to solve the long-term problems that led to the dungeon attack in the first place.
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* Several games have [[Sequence Breaking|shortcuts that lets you cut through large sections of the dungeon]]. In World 1-2 of the original ''[[Super Mario Brothers]]'', for example, you could smash through the ceiling and run over the entire level all the way to the end... and then keep going and skip half of the ''game''.
** And world 4-2 has another warp zone (better hidden, but still accessible) to let you skip to the last world, cutting out roughly 80% of the whole game.
** In some levels of ''SMB2 Japan / The Lost Levels'', such as 8-2, these are required to exit the level. Worse, some warp zones send you backwards.
** Playing as Luigi or Toadstool in ''Super Mario Bros. 2'' allowed you to easily bypass large chunks of several stages.
** The Lakitu's Cloud item in ''Super Mario Bros. 3'' lets you skip entire levels. Then there are the [[Warp Whistle
*** Then there's the P-Wing, which can make almost any level a breeze (and unlike the cloud, they stay beaten if you die). Shame they are [[Too Awesome to Use]] (until you beat the game and get an [[Bragging Rights Reward|inventory loaded with them]]).
*** There are also the
** In other levels in the game, there's a massive wall between the start and finish line, with the majority of the level in a cave underneath it. Which means anyone with the P Wing can just fly straight up, right over the wall and down to the finish block.
** Same with the Feather, Flying Yoshi, or Lakitu's Cloud (again) in ''Super Mario World'', on levels with no ceiling.
*** Another ''SMW'' example: once you gain access to the Star Road, you can skip the rest of the game straight to Bowser's Castle by keyhole-clearing each of its levels. Especially glaring if you get there through the Donut Secret House.
** In the [[Super Mario Galaxy 2
** Flipsville is basically the land of the
* ''Mario'' has nothing on ''[[Kirby]]''. In ''Kirby's Dream Land'' you can literally float over whole levels. In pretty much [[Game Breaker|every single level]]. Subsequent games put more of a limit on his flying ability.
** Admittedly, most levels in Kirby games have low ceilings and many of the enemies can fly, shoot, or otherwise hit Kirby while he's in mid-air, so this isn't really so much of a [[Game Breaker]] as it might sound. They took away his floating powers in ''[[
* Pretty much any [[Sonic the Hedgehog|Sonic]] game (with the exception of SA 2) in which Tails or Cream (who both have the ability to fly) are playable, also Knuckles to a lesser extent (he can't fly but he can glide and climb walls).
** ''Sonic 3'' (and some of the Sonic Advance series) took this into account though, providing alternate routes only reachable by using those abilities.
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** In ''[[Sonic Unleashed]]'', [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H9Dw9CgYqA there's one stage that can be won in under five seconds by Sonic turning around and railjumping to the exit.]
*** ''Sonic Unleashed'' itself has gained a bit of a following for people who know level layouts and special tricks, allowing speedruns of certain levels. The Air Boost in this game alone can turn a platforming segment/puzzle into a two-second solution of [[Cutting the Knot|"Just jump and boost over it,"]] among a ton of other small tricks to speed up levels. Specifically, a couple levels in particular with the description of "Complete X Laps!" can be sequence broke by turning around at specific points, tricking the game into thinking you've reached a certain lap early.
** In [[Knuckles Chaotix]] you can play as Charmy, who can fly for as long as you want with out ever needing to land, so you can basically go straight through the levels with out doing anything.
* In ''[[Nethack]]'', a game which very much prides itself on its flexibility, you can begin the game with a pickaxe or acquire one very early on. A pickaxe can break down every wall, including the ones that separate one level from another. By diligent digging, you can literally bypass the entire dungeon, stopping only to bushwhack a few mandatory bosses before ascending to ultimate victory. This means playing with a very [[Low
** And also has the nickname "Die for Victory" as the tactic generally kills characters very quickly. The benefit is largely that you'll go through so many characters that eventually you'll get lucky and end up with a somewhat stable setup.
** "Every wall" is a bit of an exaggeration; there are a few special levels where the walls and/or floors are undiggable.
** Many [[Roguelike
* The old ''Ragnarok'' RPG had potions of phasing, which allowed you to walk through walls (except in the shop level) and even between planes, letting you skip the tedious process of looking for portals. If you walked off the map, however, you'd fall to Niflheim and take a lot of damage, usually dying.
* The RTS game ''Dungeon Keeper 2'' has a campaign level that has racing against the clock while your mission is the destroy the enemy Dungeon Heart where the Macguffin is stored in the far North, having to go through another enemy camp in the middle to get there and having overwhelming numbers against you with few resources while you're stuck in the far South. The obvious solution hinted by the mission briefing is to find the bypass. This can be done by building a bridge on the west side over the water and then tunneling past both bases straight to the enemy's Dungeon Heart. Another level gives you the choice of a frontal assault to be able to assassinate the enemy leader or to tunnel east and attack him in his own headquarters bypassing all his defenses.
* A justified aversion in ''[[Mass Effect 2]]''. On Illium, at the start of the mission to find the Assassin, Shepard notes 'Why don't we just fly up to the top?' His/Her informant, however, comments 'They have a lot of merc's carrying rocket launchers, just waiting for you to try..'.
* In the ''[[Disgaea]]'' series, units with flight like the Mothman and Masked Hero can move through enemy units, and disregard the height of terrain, making them extremely useful for any map where you need to get a certain point to complete it, as both of those things will frequently pose problems for normal units.
* In ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'' one can bypass much of the Shinra Building and its guards by simply taking the stairs as opposed to fighting your way floor by floor. This is, however, incredibly boring, time consuming, ''and'' you have to put up with your characters complaining the entire way. There are a few bits of nice loot on the stairs, however.
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*** Repair, Science, Speech, Barter, Lockpick and Disguises allow you to do this a lot over the course of the game. The difficulty of Dead Money is largely dependent on if you actually leveled your skills fully or used every possible drug, magazine, and equipment bonus to pass skill checks and put the bare minimum skill points in as a result.
** In the DLC ''Old World Blues'', a mission requires you to test out a stealth suit by reaching a safe without being detected. You could carefully avoid and disable robots, turrets, lasers, and land mines. Or you could destroy all the obstacles before the test even begins. Even better, a player with a force-field disabling weapon can use the observation level to drop directly into the final room of the test.
* A lucky player could just run straight through the first mission of ''[[
** Of course, if you used that tactic, the UNATCO troops would [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything|complain about having to do all the work]]. That's why you were sent in to the level the first place!
** A player that knows what he's doing can force open the UNATCO door with a gas grenade, bypassing the mission entirely.
** There are many examples of bypassing danger by taking a stealthy route to the target, particularly in Castle Clinton, where the player can use the keypad near the vending machine, go through the vents, and then find the Ambrosia while only encountering one or two guards.
** Another one occurs after Denton sends the signal from the roof of the former NSC base. Just put a bunch of mods in Leg Strength (which lowers fall damage) and jump off the roof.
* A variation appears in ''[[
** It is also possible to go past most of the Undercity plot by simply bribing the guards at the entrance (exit) and most other dungeons can be severely shortened through use of the transformation-teleport bug.
** And unofficially, one of the most popular [[Game Mod|mods]] for ''Shadows of Amn'' is an NPC that justs teleports you and your party to the end of the opening dungeon with any worthwhile items, quest hooks, and the equivalent gold roughly equal to the market value of all the [[Vendor Trash|junk that you could have picked off each damned corpse]] as well as a bunch of experience points. Because in a game with very high replay value, after a few times through, [[Scrappy Level|that dungeon really is that boring.]]
** On that note, several mods also exist for other [[Role
* In ''[[Neverwinter Nights 2]]'', the supposed [[Door to Before]] in the Temple of Seasons can be opened from the "wrong" side by any decent rogue, skipping the entire dungeon.
** It is possible to do this in the Golem Dungeon in ''[[Neverwinter Nights]]'', as there is a door right at the entrance that leads straight to the final room of the dungeon. It takes a ''lot'' of lockpicking skill to open it, however.
* In ''[[
* Possible in many ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' dungeons if you use an all-stealth group. Having all druids is most effective, as they can occupy any slot in a group (tank, healer, DPS). Though Blizzard got a bit crafty recently and allowed some of the enemies to detect stealth.
** Rogues (and anyone with the Engineering or Blacksmithing professions) can pick the locks of some doors that ordinarily require keys found on bosses in that dungeon. Others can't be picked, however, and there's no way to tell except by trying.
** Some dungeons however are designed in a way that lets player skip some bosses. The Botanica being the most notable since you can skip ''every'' boss, but given the ease of most of them, its pretty pointless to do so. They are the ones that give the nice loot, after all. In addition, crafty players have found ways to bypass several normal enemies with various tricks, although the usefulness of some are debatable.
*** And one of these, the infamous wall-walking <s>feature</s>bug, was almost entirely patched out of the game after a number of rather blatant exploits.
** Indeed, the Deadmines fall under this
** There's another anti-stealth technique used by some encounters, in which a boss will summon all the monsters you haven't yet defeated in the nearby area to assist it, with [[Hilarity Ensues|hilarious]] [[Party Wipe|consequences]].
*** Made even funnier when you have a group with enough gear/levels/skill to simply mow these extra enemies down as they arrive and still beat the boss.
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** An interesting example happened in the past, when one of the players (called Angwe) set camp in a narrow passage (that had to be passed through to reach an important location) and killed every character he could. Other players had to be very creative to pass this place.
* In [[Dawn of War]] Dark Crusade, during the Space Marine stronghold mission an early optional objective allows you to direct [[Earthshattering Kaboom|orbital bombardments]] from the ''Litany of Fury'' by co-opting the Blood Ravens' communications. The Imperial Guard stronghold has a scanner that gives you line of sight to one point anywhere on the map temporarily. Orbital bombardment can one-shot an enemy stronghold building.
** The mission is even easier for Tau, whose commander has both long ranged weapons, jet pack and stealth. He can jump over the SM defences and blast the stronghold while remaining hidden from retaliation.
* Can be done on any mission in ''[[City of Heroes]]'' that does not require every foe on the map to be defeated as long as the players have Stealth or at least one has Stealth and the ability to teleport their teammates to their location. Stealth can be taken by any character by level 6, and the Stalker archetype has it as a required power at level 1. However, some enemies later in the game have + perception powers that allow them to see through stealth as well as some maps featuring obstacles that will suppress stealth if the player gets too close to them.
** The most impressive example of this is the final mission of the Katie Hannon task force. Players are expected to beat their way through hordes of [[The Fair Folk|Red Caps]], find a captured witch, and get her out through wave after wave of ambushes. This happens on an outdoor map, though, and the witch is capable of flying. As a result, it's become standard practice to fly to the witch, blow away her captors, and fly her out.
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** Metroid: Zero Mission on the GBA let you use a morph-ball shinespark to acquire super missiles early, bypassing a few minibosses. It was a tricky technique, and probably more time-consuming than just killing the boss. Worryingly, the skipped bosses register as dead if you come back later, down to scenery-alterations caused by their death throes. If you didn't kill it, then what did...
* In the original ''[[X-COM]]'', most walls can be shot through with a powerful enough weapon. Eventually, units can be outfitted with flying armour and weapons powerful enough to punch through the hull of a U.F.O - making it possible to simply blast your way into the bridge.
* In the "Vacillia Battleships" stage in ''[[Zone of the Enders]]: the 2nd Runner'', you're normally supposed to fight your way to each ship's [[Wave Motion Gun]] and take that out, which leaves its [[For Massive Damage|weak point]] in the back vulnerable to a shot from your own [[Wave Motion Gun]]. What they ''don't'' tell you, is that your [[Wave Motion Gun]] is actually powerful enough to take down those ships outright through sheer damage. If they get close enough, you can cripple one ship, wait until another gets close, then fire your cannon and just sweep the beam down it's length, ''then'' finish the first ship off.
* In the first ''[[Halo]]'' game, you can pull this if you're VERY lucky. In the level "Assault on the Control Room," in the last quarter of the level, you encounter a group of Covenant Grunts, Jackals, and Elites. One of the Elites is piloting a Banshee, a flying vehicle. However, until they see you, they aren't doing anything in particular. One well-aimed shot with a plasma pistol, and you can take out the pilot of the banshee, and wreck havoc on all Covenant forces between you and the final room.
*** even before that, on the first bridge you cross, you can hug the cliff all the way down to the bottom. the rest of the enemies will not spawn so you skip about 95% of all the fighting in the level.
** There's another spot where a door is meant to close before you can get to it. The intention is that you are entering on foot - with a warthog, you won't be slowed down by the enemies between you and the door, and with good timing and driving skills, you can wedge the warthog in the doorway, forcing the door to stay open. If you're also lucky, it's far enough through for you to hop out on the other side, bypassing having to fight your way to and through the back door.
** There are in fact many more examples which can be found throughout the game, like hugging the wall down a huge valley, allowing you to take a ride in the Pelican dropship, straight to the Scorpion tank in the 5th level.
* In ''[[Portal (
** In the commentary, the designers admit that there were a few bypasses that play testers stumbled upon, allowing them to skip portions of the puzzles. Many times, they decided to leave it in because the shortcut was less intuitive and a bit more challenging to use. Still, knowing how to do this could save some time.
* This is usually the best (and sometimes only) way to get A ranks on missions in ''[[Valkyria Chronicles]]''. At max level with all of her potentials unlocked and their chance of awakening boosted with a special order, [[Game Breaker]] Alicia can quite literally run across the entire map, shrug off or dodge anything the enemy can throw at her, and capture the enemy's base camp in the space of a single turn without having to fire a single shot.
* Some games with randomly generated dungeons, such as ''[[Persona 3]]'' and ''[[Baroque (
** [[Pokémon Mystery Dungeon]] has the Pure Seed item, which teleports you to the stairs down instantly. [[Awesome but Impractical]] in that, while not very expensive, you'd have to bring one for each of the up to 50-70 floors of the dungeon, can only find them as random drops or in the randomly restocked shops, and they would take up a lot of space in your bag...
* ''[[Fallout]] 3'' also has the lockpick bug/feature. If you max out lockpicking COMPLETELY, you can lockpick through the exit of the dungeons. Thus, literally bypassing everything.
** Several dungeons (the one that comes to mind the most is the Antagonizer's Lair) have a hidden back door that you can use to skip all the monsters and traps and go straight to the boss/Macguffin item/mission objective.
* ''[[Avernum]]'' sets these up intentionally in the first three games. Learn the Priest spell "Move Mountains" and look for cracked walls, and you can sometimes get around the baddies (or at least find sealed-off rooms.) Sadly, as of the fourth this is no longer possible.
* Late in ''[[
** So in order to beat the Pacifist Run, you have to build the biggest gun you can?
*** [[Peace Through Superior Firepower]], my friend.
* In ''[[
** You can also get to the third island earlier than intended by running a boat ashore near the pipeline that functions as a border in the water, and pushing the boat past it on land.
** There's another way to get to the third island early. On the second island, there's a hospital with a big dark blue window high up in the air. A player could, with careful use of cheats, get up there and find the window wasn't solid. If the player drove a car through the window, they would fall and land inside a tunnel that led into the third island, bypassing the blocked tunnel entrance.
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***** "Two-Faced Tanner", from GTA III, involves over-taking and killing an undercover cop. As soon as you attack his car, you get the cops on your case, coming at you with just about everything they have. You can't disable his vehicle beforehand. What you can do is get ahead of him, jump out of your car, and then destroy his car with an M-16. It takes about half a magazine, and when he dies the cops automatically desist.
***** The street races in GTA Vice City can be made much easier by simply killing all of your opponents in the opening seconds with a tank cannon shell.
** ''[[
** ''[[Grand Theft Auto IV]]'' has one in the mission Pest Control, where you have to kill {{spoiler|Ray Boccino}}. Before the mission starts, you can see his car sitting outside the building the mission starts at, so you can simply slap a car bomb on it and set it off when he gets in. You still have to clean up his guards, but you skip the entire pursuit section of the mission.
* In ''[[
** In ''[[
* In ''[[The Godfather (
** In other words, playing like a real mafia man.
* In the ''[[Jurassic Park]]: Lost World'' arcade light gun game, successfully completing objectives at certain points (saving a triceratops, inputting a passcode to lock a door, etc.) enables the player to bypass some parts of levels.
* ''[[Left 4 Dead]]'' is usually linear and when hordes arrive, most players hole up in small rooms or something similar, especially in the finales. However, the infected will sometimes make their own shortcuts by smashing down walls, catching the survivors off guard.
* In ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass]]'' Link must return periodically to the Temple of the Ocean King, a multi-segmented dungeon that is FAR too long for its own good. Fortunately, they give you the ability to skip many many floors after certain points in the game. They did not go far enough though. Even in the end game getting to the bottom is [[Fake Difficulty|very annoying.]]
** Then, in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks]]'' Link must climb up the Tower of Spirits. While it is very similar in function to Phantom Hourglass's central dungeon, you can now
** A beautiful and brutal example from ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess]]'' that utterly makes up for the [[Soup Cans]] puzzle- in the Temple of Time, you gain the Dominion Rod and thereby gain control of a monolithic, mobile, hammer-wielding statue, which you have to return to the first room. The hammer-wielding statue can break past all of the fiddly little gates and things that you had to work your way past on the way up. And kill all enemies in one hit. You do not know what fun is until you see an entire puzzle-room destroyed 'neath the mighty tread of the Hammer Golem!
** In ''[[Ocarina of Time]]'', the game only checks if you got the [[Plot Coupons]] from the last two dungeons, instead of the last five as it should. Normally, the game prevents access to the Shadow Temple until you complete both the Fire and Water temples by putting the entrance up high and only giving you the [[Warp Whistle|warp song]] after you complete them. And, normally, you cannot complete the Spirit Temple until you learn how to go back in time, which you can't do until you complete the Forest Temple. But [[Good Bad Bugs]] exist to get into the Shadow Temple and complete the Spirit Temple without having to fully complete the other three, making at least half-dungeon bypasses possible. Additionally, the Kakariko Well is not technically required, though it takes a lot of memorization to get through certain areas without the Lens of Truth it provides.
* Several ''[[Descent]]'' levels have this, e.g. ''Descent II'''s eighth level has a huge shortcut that allows you to go straight to the red key and the boss, bypassing about half the level. Level 2 also has a shortcut to the red key, which also allows you to go through the rest of the level backwards.
* In ''[[Crash Bandicoot]]'', the second-to-last 'proper' level (not including bosses and a [[Breather Level]]) is long and difficult. If you acquired a gem from another similar level, you can take a shortcut, grab many 1-ups and finish the level in fifteen seconds.
* ''Red Faction'' has entire levels with destroyable walls, making it necessary to punch through them in order to bypass locked doors and the like. There are even achievements for bypassing levels with the least number of explosives.
* In ''[[Turok (
* ''[[Tomb Raider]] 3'' had several of these, but they often resulted in you [[
* ''[[Ultima I]]'' had spells which allowed you to instantly travel one floor up or one floor down inside a dungeon. Using these, you could skip all the dungeons entirely by simply spellcasting your way down to the appropriate level, killing whatever quest monster you were sent there for, then spellcasting your way back to the surface. Later games kept the spells, but subverted the trope by making your objectives in the dungeons more complex.
** In ''Ultima IV'', each dungeon presents two objectives: a magic stone somewhere inside, and the altar rooms, which hold [[Plot Coupons]] and connect to multiple dungeons. However, a secret passage {{spoiler|in Lord British's Castle}} will allow you to skip straight to the bottom level of Dungeon Hythloth, whereby all three altar rooms can be accessed. The stones still take some doing, but since the altar rooms connect the bottom floors of all seven dungeons, and the stones tend to be on the lower floors...
* One [[Video Game Achievement]] in ''[[Jett Rocket]]'' tasks you to complete an Atoll level in under 20 seconds. As you might expect, doing this without glitching is impossible unless you pull a Dungeon Bypass in the [[Gimmick Level]]. Don't worry; no one will call you out on it.
* ''The Adventures of Rad Gravity'''s [[Very Definitely Final Dungeon|very definitely final planet]] has a nerve-wracking maze of [[Magical Mystery Doors|Magical Mystery Teleporters]], but it can by bypassed by glitching through the walls with the Teleport Beacon.
* ''[[Planescape: Torment]]'' differs from many RPGs in that instead of having to assemble the whole party in the transition zone in order to move to the next location, you just need bring one character there. If you have an experienced thief with well developed stealth ability in your party, you can bypass most of the heavily infested locations. Of course, sometimes the exit is behind a locked door but guess what? The experienced thief can steal the key!
* In ''[[
* In ''[[King's Quest: Mask of Eternity
* In ''[[Age of Wonders]]'' Lizardfolk's innate swimming ability give them a powerful advantage on some maps, which is why they didn't appear in the sequels. Particularly since there was a water spell that flooded the map, giving them even more water to have an advantage with.
** Subverted in the mission which requires you to go through an underground tunnel under some mountains. If you try to go over the mountains instead, you'll run into a very aggressive red dragon. Also, even if you somehow managed to defeat the dragon, it actually takes longer then going the normal way because mountains give you a movement penalty.
* In ''[[Little Busters
* The Ratchet & Clank series have had a couple of these, thanks to many platforms that the player should probably never reach still being made solid.
** In [[Ratchet and Clank Going Commando]], the final level of the game has a very large wall surrounding the entire first half of the level. Getting on top of it allows the player to essentially run around it until they reach the back of the level, jumping into a teleporter to let them skip to the second half of the level. (Using this, and an alternate dungeon bypass on Grelbin, one is capable of skipping the Hypnomatic fetch quest, which includes large chunks of Smolg and even ''completely skipping'' Allgon City, Damosel.)
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** The most well-known, however, is the Razor-Claws glitch. (A weapon that, while cool, did not make it into [[Ratchet and Clank Future A Crack In Time|A Crack In Time]], for obvious reasons.) The weapon allows one to climb walls, which can turn platform heavy levels into a case of "Climb a wall, walk/glide over the level, land at the end/in the boss' area" followed by "Fly to next level. Rinse and repeat."
* The first ''[[Elder Scrolls]]'' game, ''Arena'', included the spell "Passwall". It allowed players to permanently destroy dungeon walls, letting them bypass tough enemies and other obstacles. They didn't include it in the next game, ''Daggerfall'', but enterprising players can make use of the wonky level geometry to move through the walls into a black space known as [[Fan Nickname|The Void]], allowing you to run along on top of the dungeon paths. Be aware, though, that while it's relatively easy to pass into the Void, it's rather more complex to get back out of it. These "features" live on in later Bethesda games, with the "tcl" (toggle clipping) console command.
** Though if you are going to use cheats you may as well mention one of Daggerfall's cheat-commands: jumping to a dungeon's quest locations,<ref>That is, the points in a dungeon where the game tells the code 'you can place the thing(s) the quest is about here'</ref>
* ''[[Kingdom of Loathing]]'' ''lets'' you do this for [[That One Puzzle]] in the Nemesis Quest after you fail the puzzle enough times. You can restart the platform hopping puzzle by swimming back to shore... then, your character soon realizes that ''you can just swim to the goal that way. [[Convection, Schmonvection|Through lava.]]'' You don't get the best rewards (really good spleen consumable and an accessory that gives HP/MP and sells for a lot) if you do this though.
* The Chronosphere from ''[[Command
* The [[Jet Pack]] item from ''[[Billy Hatcher and
* The 6th Terran mission in ''[[
** The 7th mission can be completed in about thirty seconds by simply casting "Defense Matrix" on the SCV with the Psi Emitter and sending him directly to the beacon in the enemy's base. The right route there results in very few defenders in your way, and with the Defense Matrix they can't kill the SCV in time before he gets to the beacon.
** A Protoss mission expects you to wait until another general arrives with enough reinforcements to destroy the heavily guarded enemy base. Though it is very difficult, you can potentially destroy the base on your own without him before he arrives.
** The 7th Protoss mission is a terrible pain, pitching you against three strategically positioned enemy bases, but you only have to destroy a single building to win. Instead of building up your base and taking out theirs as is expected, you can simply utilize their invisibility and go kill the objective in about five minutes, as long as you take the right way in that lets you bypass most of their defenses.
** In the expansion pack, a mission has you escorting a leader unit to a beacon in the middle of the enemy base. If you take along an escort unit or two to clear the anti-air turrets on the way, you can use a Shuttle to fly her to the beacon, bypassing the enemy base entirely.
** In the third-to-last mission in Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty you are supposed to plough through a sprawling Zerg base in order to get to another downed ship. If you have the Deep Striking ability, you can send some Ghosts directly to the ship and nuke the three target structures. Lacking that, pack some heavy ordnance into the transports and fly them along the map edges, bypassing the base and facing only minimal resistance.
* This was the main reason the Teleportation Plasmid was removed from the original ''[[
* In ''[[Ragnarok Online]]'' the teleport skill and flywings would make bypassing dungeons possible if you got lucky enough. One dungeon in particular made this NECESSARY to access as it was in the middle of a lake on an island. Some quests, such as the fox quest in Amatsu which is necessary to access the dungeon are nearly impossible without getting around the hordes of hydras guarding the shrine. Seeing as how this dungeon was the best way to gain levels for a new acolyte becoming a priest it made poor acolytes spend half an afternoon trying to get lucky enough with their teleport skill to bypass the hydras.
* In the PC version of ''[[Far Cry]]'', in the second level, a lifeboat is hanging from the top of a beached carrier. A lucky shot from the lower deck of the carrier can break the chains, dropping the lifeboat into the water and skipping the section on top of the carrier altogether.
* Acknowledged in ''[[Gaia Online|zOMG!]]'', which has guards stationed at the west and north entrances of Barton Town to try and prevent low-level players from leaving town in those directions (into Zen Gardens and Bassken Lake areas respectively). This doesn't work as well as you'd think, because the early-game areas don't have monsters that automatically attack players, so a surprising number of newbs ignore the quest chains, walk through the low-level areas without fighting anything and gaining experience, and [[Too Dumb to Live|then wonder why all the enemies in the higher-level areas suddenly aggro and oneshot them]].
* In ''[[
* In the first level of Unit 3 in ''[[Quake II]]'', you can skip the [[Laser Hallway]] jumping puzzle by detouring through the moat and an underground passage that drops you out at the exit. Don't forget the secrets on the main path, though.
* In ''[[Resident Evil 4]]'', if you fight off the ganados in the village before entering the house containing the shotgun, Dr. Salvador won't spawn here. Don't go into the path leading to the next area, since he guards the door there. Also, fighting the second El Gigante is optional.
* Because its world and level design is decidedly [[Metroidvania]] in style, ''[[
== Web Comics ==
* [http://www.captainsnes.com/2003/02/07/278-the-easy-way-to-beat-the-castle-level/ This strip] of ''[[Captain SNES]]'' shows what's likely the ultimate example of this trope.
* The titular order in ''[[
** In comic [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0651.html #651],
* Tesla of the ''[[Adventurers
* Duv in ''[[
** Tempts Fate is fond of this trope. Being [[Tempting Fate|who he is]] Tempts uses it even when the normal route is safer, because he doesn't like it safe.
* Black Mage of ''[[
** [[Invoked Trope|Invoked]] [[Averted Trope|unsuccessfully]] much later in the comic. Upon arrival at the [[The Very Definitely Final Dungeon|Temple of Fiends]], Black Mage suggests that the Light Warriors land their airship at the top of the temple, crushing a few floors in the process and "killing their way" downwards, as he put it. Red Mage disagrees, mainly because the airship's autopilot (designed by omnipotent [[Jerkass]] elder Mage Sarda) had been pre-programmed to land them at the entrance and their previous attempts to manually control the airships given them were [[Hilarity Ensues|uniformly disastrous]].
* ''[[Bob and George]]'' has this happen with the Wily Castle in almost every game retelling. Some of the Robot Master stages, too.
* [http://www.fantasycomic.com/index.php?p=c536 This strip] in ''[[Chasing the Sunset]]''.
* Subverted in ''[[Knights of the Old Coding]]''. In [http://kotoc.comicgenesis.com/d/20020320.html this] strip, the map of the levels the heroes have to go through is explained, but an alternative is suggested:
{{quote|
'''Link:''' Yeah?
'''Kuros:''' Because he'll be expecting that! }}
** But as the heroes find out during the confrontation with Malkil [http://kotoc.comicgenesis.com/d/20030328.html here], not only had newcomer {{spoiler|Simon}} used the above tactic to quickly catch up to them, Malkil confesses that {{spoiler|he "never would have expected that!"}}
* Gort in ''[[Darken]]'' quickly tires of a confusing maze and its shifting walls and [[Kill It
* At one point in ''[[Exterminatus Now]]'', our heroes are trying to end a minor zombie problem (not yet up to a full-fledged [[Zombie Apocalypse]]). After entering the tomb, Virus begins musing on how they'll have to track down [[Solve the Soup Cans|a series of improbable objects]] [[Resident Evil|to get through a specific door, which is chained shut]]. [[Heroic Sociopath|Lothar]] snaps the chain, and everyone walks off.
* Andrew's [[Winds of Destiny Change|"order" ability]] in ''[[
* [[Insecticomics]] 646 (during the spoof of ''[[
* Right at the beginning of the rpg-story in ''[[Absurd Notions]]''. Starts [http://www.absurdnotions.org/page9.html here], solution [http://www.absurdnotions.org/page11.html here].
* ''[[
** In one scene, [[The Roleplayer|Tavros]] is insisting on going all around a dungeon and doing lots of puzzles to learn the story of the world they have been brought to. [[The Real Man|Vriska]], his partner who [[Play the Game, Skip
* In ''[[Kevin and Kell]]'', Danielle, a [[Defector From Decadence]] who left Rabbit's Revenge, thinks she's safe in the Dewclaw house basement because Kell, a skilled predator, lives there and Rabbit's Revenge wouldn't risk facing her to reach her. Two members then tunnel into her room.
* One brief gag in a ''Yamara'' fantasy-gaming comic had some non-traditional "adventurers" blow up a dungeon with dynamite, then tally their experience points and break out the shovels.
== Web Original ==
* The classic [[Fauxtivational Poster]]: "[https://web.archive.org/web/20131005071624/http://www.llbbl.com/data/RPG-motivational/target237.html POWERLEVELING]: When you just don't have the time to dick around."
* The RinkWorks game Maze Maker generates a random printable maze. The same website allows visitors to submit altered screenshots from the site as "RinkWorks Graffiti" ([http://www.rinkworks.com/graffiti/ see here]). Needless to say, it's quite popular to use this in Maze Maker graffiti.
** More specifically, one of the early "Graffiti" images was a maze with an extra wall drawn in, rendering the maze impossible to complete in the normal sense. A significant number of later Graffiti images are Graffitis of ''the original altered Graffiti maze''.
*
{{quote|
38. When investigating evil cultists not allowed to just torch the decrepit mansion from the outside.
50. Not allowed to use thermodynamic science to asphyxiate the orcs' cave instead of exploring it first.
694. Search the old castle means enter it, not level it with artillery and dig through the rubble.
1661. Cleaning out the dungeon means more than just backing up a cement truck to the window.
1715. Can't just ''wizard lock'' the villain's throne room and come back in two weeks after he's starved to death.
}}
* In ''[[Journey Quest]]'' Perf and Nara accomplish this {{spoiler|on the Temple of All Dooms, by accident!}}
== Western Animation ==
* Faced with a deathtrap maze of The Riddler's design and time running out, Batman commandeers one of the maze's flying robots (the Hand of Fate) to bring him to the Riddler's would-be victim in ''[[Batman:
** Another episode had Batman clear Mad Hatter's maze made of giant cards by climbing up and [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|running along the top]].
* One of the Halloween episodes of ''[[The Simpsons (
{{quote|
** Another episode subverted this when Homer tries this trick and finds an ''electric fence'' inside the corn maze. Apparently "Corn Mazes" are [[Serious Business]].
** Barely in the scope of this trope, but in another episode Mr. Burns and Smithers use their security clearance to advance through thick steel doors and other obstacles that can only be opened through retinal scanners and the like, only to see a stray dog at the destination who entered through the back door. The back SCREEN DOOR.
** And in another episode, when Marge was doing the tests to join to the Springfield Police Force, in one of them, she tried to climb a wall, but she has problems with it. Chief Wiggum notices that all the women had the same problem, that they don't use the door to cross the wall.
* Done by Wildwing in an episode of ''[[The Mighty Ducks (
* Subverted in ''[[Teen Titans (
* The opening scene of the ''[[Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy
* ''[[The Tick (animation)]]'', after trying to fairly complete a death maze, makes a clever mythical allusion to the Gordian knot, and starts busting down walls.
* In ''[[Superman: Doomsday]]'', when Lex Luthor's clone of Superman turns on him, Luthor retreats to an armored panic room that is lit by red lights (Superman needs yellow sunlight to retain his powers) and holds a pair of kryptonite encrusted gauntlets. Luthor attempts to lure the clone Superman in, but he merely locks the door, ''rips the entire panic room out of the building'', and casually drops it to the ground a hundred stories below.
* In an episode of the 1967 version of ''[[Fantastic Four (
{{quote|
* Subverted in an episode of ''[[
* Subverted in an episode of ''[[Popeye]]''; Popeye and Bluto are charting a course. Bluto wants to go around all the perilous obstacles, but Popeye scoffingly draws a straight line through them.
* In the second episode of ''[[
* In ''[[
* In a ''[[The Fairly
* ''[[Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures
== Real Life ==
* The [[Trojan Horse]] is history's most famous example.
* The Israeli army has developed tactics for urban warfare that probably count as an example of this trope. Instead of going through booby-trapped streets and narrow alleys in which troops may be exposed to sniper fire, Israeli soldiers literally ''walk through walls'', using explosives to create passageways through houses and other buildings.
** This sounds not dissimilar to an event on the Green Line in Nicosia (the divided capital of Cyprus). Reputedly, the local Turkish contingent were suspected of discreetly expanding a blockhouse so it extended into the UN secure zone. The local UN commander responded by going on patrol one morning... driving a bulldozer.
** In actuality that tactic (often called mouse-holing) predates both of the previous examples. According to [[The Other Wiki]] this was used as early as the Battle of Stalingrad. Another related ancient military tactic is undermining, digging a tunnel beneath an enemy stronghold to either knock it down or blow it up.
*** Notably this happened during the Siege of Petersburg during the [[American Civil War]]. Union troops dug a mineshaft underneath the Confederate lines and set off a sizable stash of explosives. Death From Below, pretty much. The resulting fight was dubbed the [[Exactly What It Says
**** The Battle of the Crater was ''supposed'' to have been a Dungeon Bypass, and it would have worked if General Burnside had been allowed to stick with his original plan: big explosion, specially-trained troops from the United States Colored Troops go around the crater (as opposed to ''into'' it), bypass the remaining defenses, and open the road to Petersburg. And then Meade [[Executive Meddling|stepped in]], replaced the well-trained USCT regiments with others that had no idea what would happen, denied Burnside the use of an electrical detonator so that his engineers had to use an umpty-thousand-foot-long ''rope'' as fuse, and... [[Downer Ending|yeah]]. Oh, and Meade [[Kick the Dog|managed to deflect all of the blame onto Burnside, too]].
** Taken to an extreme in the 2009 Israel/Gaza conflict. According to the accounts of some Israeli soldiers, Hamas gunmen and suicide bombers attempted to lure them into houses most likely rigged with booby traps. Instead of taking the bait, Israeli soldiers simply just knocked down the houses with bulldozers.
** Also, American troops in Iraq often face insurgents who, when charged, run and hide inside a building they hope to defend, at which point the Americans promptly call in an airstrike. The situation's so common it's earned its own unofficial acronym. (AWR, for Allah's Waiting Room.)
* In [[World War I]], the Germans executed the [
* The popular version of the [
* Another [[WW 2]] example: When the Allies were pushing into Germany near the end of the war, the depleted German army were trying to drag it out into city fighting in each town along the way, and were trying to coerce the populace to fight to the last man. Upon taking fire from the town, the Allied troops backed off to a safe distance and called in artillery strikes to reduce the entire town to rubble. When they reached the next town in line, they were usually greeted by the Mayor waving a white flag and the few remaining German troops having either fled the area or been haphazardly captured by the civilians as a sort of bribe for the Allied army.
* Averted by the Market-Garden operation. It would've been a bypass if it had succeeded, as it would allow going around the Zygfrid line. However, the operation failed. Out of 41000 airborne troops deployed, 17000 died. Oh, and the Nazis punished the Dutch who supported this operation, letting thousands of them starve to death the following winter.
* Happened (again) on a larger scale (much, MUCH MUCH larger scale) during WWII when the Americans dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki rather than fight their way across Japan.
** The entirety of the Allied island-hopping strategy: why dig Japanese garrisons out of every little island they've taken when you can cut them off from reinforcement, bomb anything they could use to attack you directly to rubble, and simply move on to the next island. (Stranded Japanese soldiers continued to camp in their outposts for years, sometimes decades, afterward, since they received no new orders and couldn't trust radio broadcasts saying the war was
** Of course, when they needed to clear out an island for whatever reason (Iwo Jima, for example), the result was a dungeon adventure akin to the ''[[Tomb of Horrors]]''.
* In the city of Telmissus in Asia Minor, an ox-cart was said to be tied either to a post or its own shaft with a fiendishly complicated knot by the cart's owner, a man named Gordias; the knot itself became known as the Gordian Knot. It was said that whoever could untie the knot would conquer the world. Alexander the Great managed to untie it by cutting it in two with his sword. (This is the legendary version usually told; the real version is not so simple. In a sense, the story as told is something of a
* Police SWAT teams discovered that getting past a door with many locks on it was a problem, so they just use a shotgun to blast out the hinges.
* The Berlin Airlift. The [[Soviet Union]] decided to control Berlin by cutting off all supplies coming into the city from the West by road and train. Instead of trying to recapture a corridor of land between West Germany and West Berlin, allied nations decided to just ''fly'' over.
* When the Mongols decided to conquer China, they faced the Great Wall, a series of fortifications designed specificially to keep them out. Rather than fighting their way through it or riding around it, they took advantage of the Song Dynasty's unstable political climate, made a few allies within China, and bribed their way in.
* A similar tactic got the Crusaders, and later the Turks, into Constantinople. It's a heavily walled city, but if the emperor needs an army and you happen to have a horde of barbarian mercenaries for hire...
* While the [
* One of the factors that contributed to the [
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