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{{trope}}
[[File:beat_maze_the_easy_way_3020beat maze the easy way 3020.jpg|frame| Screw it. I want that cheese NOW.]]
 
 
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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|Airborne Mooks]]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).
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*** 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|OAVs]]s does this too, with an underground dungeon a demon generates. Lina just blasts downward through all the floors, and comments that it's kinda stupid that the monster is ''always'' at the bottom floor of these things.
* ''[[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...
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** Earlier, in the Alabasta arc, Sanji invokes this trope by realizing the easiest way to get to the clock tower in this maze of a city is to kick through the walls of every building in his way. This later comes back to bite him in the ass when he overhears townsfolk complaining about the repair work they'll have to do.
* 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 down--whichdown—which, since the henchmen had unknowingly set themselves up like dominoes, causes a chain reaction of falling walls until they form a pathway straight to the exit.
* 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.
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* In ''[[Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan|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 (film)|The new flick]] shows the events of the test (in the altered timeline): Kirk reprograms the simulator to "delete" the enemy defences and make them easy as pie to kill. Much more of a [[Dungeon Bypass]].
** Of course, [[Alternate Continuity|both could be correct.]]
** Interestingly, ''Starfleet Academy'' (which was released about 10 years before ''[[Star Trek (film)|Star Trek]]'') presents both options to the player, when they stumble upon Kirk's original hack when taking the Kobayashi Maru themselves.
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== 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 -- namelyway—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 -- allmaze—all paths within the maze lead to those two arches, and both of those arches autokill the player if he chooses one.
 
 
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* 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|Bolos]]s grow bigger and heavier (in their later versions rivaling the size and mass of [[World War One]] battleships), the concepts of 'obstacle' or 'barrier' become less meaningful — they blow everything in their way up, iron it flat through the sheer weight of their passage, or both.
* 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.
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* 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 ''[[Phule's Company]]'' series, the Omega Mob tends towards solutions like this. The key example comes in the first book, where Phule's troops (a gang of misfits that were already considered too irregular for the Space Legion, which is already an irregular military force) are going up against one of the finest military units in the galaxy in a series of competitions. The second event is the challenge course, which is to be run "under combat conditions" with full military gear. The regular Army unit runs the course perfectly, setting a spectacular time as they do so. Phule's company literally ''destroys'' the course, blowing down walls, cutting away barbed wire, and in general ''using'' their full military gear to wreck everything that gets in their way, and get away with it through [[Loophole Abuse]] and because the rival commander was too damned impressed to push the point.
* 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 [[Dungeon Bypass]] of the famous Labyrinth of [[Classical Mythology]], which is now much larger, and beneath all of the United States of America. {{spoiler|Luke finds it, but Percy works out another Dungeon Bypass, a "clear-sighted" mortal, who always know the way through the Labyrinth}}.
* 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.
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** 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]] talks about this as well.
* 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: [[Dungeon Bypass]]! Every fishing village would have a labyrinth (mostly a simple spiral) built from rocks as big as a head or so. Before going out, the fisherman would walk all the way to the middle of the spiral, the gnomes presumably trailing him. When he reached the middle, he would simply run across the stones, down to his boat, and cast off. The gnomes, too small to jump over the stones, would have to take the long way out of the spiral, and would be too late to sneak on the boat. Though one wonders why no gnome ever got the idea of waiting by the boats...
* [[Older Than Feudalism]]: In ''[[The Bible]]'', rather than attempt to get through the heavily defended and fortified walls of the city of Jericho, Joshua and the Israelites paraded around the city for days before blowing their trumpets. This caused the walls to crumble completely.
 
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** 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|Warp Whistles]]s.
*** 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 [[Dungeon Bypass]] opportunities '''within''' levels. For example, there's a level where you go up against a fleet of battleships... but you can bypass all the weapons and enemies by swimming '''under''' the ships. In what is apparently ''lava'', no less.[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-QVjqeeoMw\]
** 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|Rightside Down Galaxy]], halfway through, you can backflip above the maze and walk around the top. Exploring the area nets you 4 1-Ups and the ability to re-enter right on top of the Star.
** Flipsville is basically the land of the [[Dungeon Bypass]]. You can pretty much skip every single section by in order, going around or over the walls, under the level by walking on the base of it in the second one, going over the roof and spiked wall in the next area and then just jumping a wooden fence in the final part before the boss. There's also the first Bowser Jr level, the Fiery Flotilla, where you can skip most of the level by jumping on the castle walls and just long jumping to Gobblegut's boss arena.
* ''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 ''[[Kirby's Epic Yarn|Kirbys Epic Yarn]]'', though.
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** 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|Roguelikes]]s share this property; [[ADOM]] also allowed you to modify the map on most levels. In fact, digging was the ''only'' way to reach the Elemental Temples.
* 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.
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** 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 trope -- buttrope—but only so far: when the players reach the big evil's ship, rather than wading through hordes of henchmen, they can simply hang a left and move right on to the miniboss via the edges of the cavern and a conveniently-placed slope.
** 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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* ''[[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 [[Dungeon Bypass|skip all previously finished sections and never return.]]
** 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.
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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>, one after one. Combine with the Recall spell, and most dungeons becomes a breeze... well, so long as you aren't unlucky enough to arrive inside a monster or in a location that pops you into the Void, anyway.
* ''[[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 & Conquer: Red Alert]]'' allows the Allies to teleport their troops all around the battlefield, bypassing the enemy defences. In a commendable aversion of [[Gameplay and Story Segregation]], they use it story-wise as well in the final mission of Red Alert 2, when they teleport their army from Cuba to Moscow to end the war in one decisive strike.
* The [[Jet Pack]] item from ''[[Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg]]'' allows you to float indefinitely, but only at the initial hight you start floating from. Naturally, this means that if you can jump off from a high enough point, you can go over just about anything and go to pretty much anywhere in a level. At least one level in [[Slippy-Slidey Ice World|Blizzard Castle]] seems to encourage this to get around a particularly vicious slide.
* The 6th Terran mission in ''[[Starcraft]]'' has you rescuing a downed ship in the center of the map, surrounded by a ring of mountains. The game expects you, with your base in the east, to circle around clockwise to the west, taking you through the enemy bases on the way before you ascend the mountains around the ship and fight your way down to it. But if you put some units along the cliffs to the west and get sight up there with an air unit or a comsat sweep, they can kill a couple of anti-air turrets to create a safe landing zone for you to ferry them up there and fight a much shorter, much easier way to the ship. Alternatively, the downed ship has two worker units, some mechs and two bunkers defending it--destroyingit—destroying one of the bunkers gives you room to build a barracks, and you can fight your way out from the inside.
** 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.
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** 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 (animation)|The Mighty Ducks]]'' when the Ducks find themselves trapped an an alternate universe based on fantasy tropes. Faced with a huge stone maze, Wildwing simply uses his grenade launcher to blast their way though.
* Subverted in ''[[Teen Titans (animation)|Teen Titans]]''. Faced with a maze inside Raven's mind, Cyborg and Beast Boy try the usual tricks -- blastingtricks—blasting the walls and flying over them -- butthem—but are thwarted and forced to go through.
* The opening scene of the ''[[Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy|Ed, Edd n Eddy]]'' episode "They Call Him Mister Ed" had Edd setting up a massive cardboard maze and placing Chunky Puffs (Ed's favorite cereal) at the exit. It was supposed to be an experiment of sorts, with Ed being the guinea pig (Edd even timed it), but Ed, simple-minded oaf that he is, simply runs through all the walls in a straight line to get to the cereal. Edd even complains "That ''isn't'' how you go "through" a maze!"
* ''[[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.
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** 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 [[wikipedia:Schlieffen Plan|Schlieffen Plan]]: the indirect invasion of France via Belgium, and nearly reached Paris. Some French generals had proposed to do the same thing in case of a war with Germany, but the French never adopted it.
* The popular version of the [[wikipedia:Battle of France|Battle of France]] is that the Germans executed a massive [[Dungeon Bypass]] by invading through Belgium to avoid the [[Maginot Line]]. If that's your preconception, then the actual history [[Subverted Trope|subverts]] this: the French built the [[Maginot Line]] precisely because they wanted the Germans to go through Belgium. But the French expected this would be the ''northern'' Belgian plains, so they sent their best forces there, while the Germans executed the true [[Dungeon Bypass]] of the campaign by going through ''southern'' Belgium. See the [[Maginot Line|Useful Notes entry on the Maginot Line]].
* 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 over -- ifover—if their radios even still worked.)
** 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 [[Dungeon Bypass]] for the story as it actually happened.)
* 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.
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* 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 [[wikipedia:Siege of Kazan|Siege of Kazan]] in 1552 was your typical siege involving thousands of troops (with the Russians outnumbering the defending Tatars) and hundreds of cannons, the city was only taken when the attackers secretly dug a tunnel under a defensive wall and planted charges, blowing a huge hole in it. Later, [[Ivan the Terrible]], who commanded the Russian forces, decided to safeguard Moscow from the same tactics by ordering basements to be built under each defense tower with copper plates mounted on walls. During sieges, people with good hearing would be sent into these rooms to listen for sounds of digging that would be amplified by the plates.
* One of the factors that contributed to the [[wikipedia:Fall of Constantinople|Fall of Constantinople]] (thus the [[Trope Namer]] for [[Istanbul (Not Constantinople)]]) was the failure of the naval blockade by the Christian defenders of the city. Not because Sultan Mehmed II broke through the blockade with his famed [[BFG|BFGs]]s, but because the Sultan transported his fleet overland: he ''ordered the construction of a road of greased logs across Galata on the north side of the Golden Horn, and rolled his ships across''.
 
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