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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