Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: An obstacle that's easy to cross or move in Real Life is impossible to cross or move in a video game.

  • Straight: Bob, the player character in Trope Quest, can't break open a locked door or jump over a fallen tree even though he can easily slay armoured thugs and hike over mountains.
  • Exaggerated: Bob's powers borderline a Physical God's powers, but he can't go over a one-way shallow ramp if he has already crossed it.
    • Alternately, Bob's player can't climb over logs, get passed rocks, break open doors or any of that after playing Trope Quest.
  • Justified: Bob's powers only activate when fighting the Big Bad's Mooks, so they don't activate when he's exploring.
    • Bob is in a wheelchair, making him unable to get passed anything that requires climbing. However, he's trained to fight nonetheless.
  • Inverted: Dungeon Bypass
    • Bob can go through anything, like walls, trees, and fallen logs.
  • Subverted: At first, it appears that Bob can't go through locked doors, but once he gets the battering ram weapon, he can destroy any and all doors in his path.
    • The locked doors are actually magical, made of adamantium disguised as rotten wood, etc.
  • Double Subverted: Cue tree stumps, traffic cones, shallow rivers, etc., blocking his way.
  • Parodied: Bob can't even walk over a pebble.
  • Deconstructed: Bob's inability to move over everyday objects that are in his path cripples his heroic efforts and makes him looked down upon by other heroes who consider him unreliable.
  • Reconstructed: Bob gets a ton of super powers to compensate for his inability.
  • Zig Zagged: The guide book to Trope Quest has a five-page chart on what everyday obstacles could or couldn't be crossed without any problems.
    • Bob randomly transforms into a short creature with no arms.
  • Averted: The item is easy to move in real life, or, Bob can move a heavy rock in the video game, but in real life can't do crap.
  • Enforced: Anti-Sequence Breaking.
    • One of Bob's foes puts a fence around Bob while he's sleeping knowing that he can't possibly get past it.
    • The Big Bad surrounds his entire fortress with a fence and has no other defences.
  • Lampshaded: "What do you mean you can't get over the fence, Bob? It's only, what, waist high?"

We just have to get over this Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence to get back to... uh oh.

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