Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:
<!-- %%Souce: http://rnzzz.deviantart.com/art/Gamefucks-Pokemans-142255303 -->
{{quote|'''Soldier:''' It's a chest-high wall, Mr. Smarty Pants. Got any more dumb ideas? Maybe we can ''crowbar'' it away? Or ''kick'' under it? Or ''gravity gun'' through it?
'''Frohman:''' Or climb over it?
'''Soldier:''' Or ''climb over'' it?
|'''''[[Concerned]]'''''}}
The phenomenon, found in countless video games, in which a seemingly trivial
The basic Insurmountable Waist Height Fence is an obstacle, usually between ankle and chest height, that the character(s) can't climb or step over simply because the game doesn't include such an action. Other common variations include:
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In the most [[Egregious]] cases the level designers don't even bother with a token obstacle and just use a straight-up [[Invisible Wall]].
Many examples could also be thought of as ordinary, non-insurmountable obstacles combined with [[Invisible Wall
In extreme cases, a ''ramp'' might be used to make a one-way crossing over the obstacle to prevent backtracking, as if the player character was in an invisible wheelchair. This type of structure is called a ''Sawtooth'' by game designers; it applies to anywhere that stops the player going back after passing, and is often logical to the point it's hard to notice (a ladder collapses after you climb down, an elevator is disabled by a powercut, etc). Extremely shallow sawteeth are likely to be obvious, jarring and extremely ridiculous.
Compare [[Solve the Soup Cans]], [[Border Patrol]]. Contrast [[Cutting the Knot]], [[Absurdly Ineffective Barricade]]. See also [[Broken Bridge]], [[Dronejam]]. Not to be confused with the [[Naruto the Abridged Series|one-foot-tall brick wall]].
----
{{examples}}
=== Video Games ===
* Most [[
* ''[[Star Trek Online]]'' has one prominent example. On the Starfleet Academy map you are not able to access the waterfront which is only seperated by literal waist-height fence. Under normal circumstances your character would even be able to jump over it. However, when the area was first released there was a bug that transported you on the other side of the fence and let you explore the area beyond it - including the Golden Gate Bridge and the normally inaccessible shuttlebay atop one of the Academy's buildings.
* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] by Guybrush in ''[[Escape from Monkey Island]]''. On Lucre Island, there's a nice little field which is closed off by nothing more than a very low, wooden fence. Guybrush refuses to cross it, saying, "I could go over there, but... I... really don't WANT to. Yeah..."
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* Countless examples of [[Locked Door|locked doors]] seemingly made of flimsy wood being impervious to explosives of all kinds. In ''[[Half Life]]'', Gordon Freeman couldn't knock down locked doors with any of the explosives he was carrying, which included grenades and demolition charges. In its expansion pack "Opposing Force" the character of Adrian Sheppard, despite being a trained marine, cannot breach doors unless he enlists the help of an NPC with a blowtorch. Even worse, the NPC must be kept alive during an [[Escort Mission]], if he's killed, the game ends. Sheppard apparently can't just take the blowtorch from the fallen man and use it himself.
* [[Patapon]] has a strange (and often outrageous) variation of this.Toripons fly very high when in Fever mode; high enough to don't be hit some spear and megapon attacks,and to completely ignore some of the bosses's attacks.But for some reason,they cannot fly over any obstacles;be it stone walls or the low wooden fences or even enemies,so you have to destroy said obstacle in order for them to advance.
* The old RPG ''[[
* The ''[[Brothers in Arms]]'' games feature highly physically fit paratroopers who are unable to surmount fences and earthen walls that seemingly only reach them to the waist. Curiously enough, during scripted attacks some enemies are capable of jumping over said fences.
** In the second game Sergeant Matt Baker, an NPC who was the player character in the first game, can be seen climbing over one of those low fences that he could not traverse when he was controlled by the player.
** Finally, in the third game, Hell's Highway, vaulting over obstacles was implemented. There's also a lot of destructible cover and terrain. Nothing beats blowing an MG out of his nest with a bazooka. The only things you can't go through are buildings - pretty much everything else is vaultable.
* [[Shadow of the Colossus]] averts this trope brutally, but has some instances where it's played straight. Wander can climb mountain-high monsters and still be unable to scale a few mountains in the valley with relatively gentle slopes.
* The 3D ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' games generally lack any kind of [[Le Parkour|parkour]] or jumping, making even the slightest ridge an effective
** ''[[Final Fantasy XI]]'' also contains some particularly irritating examples of this. They don't mark the end of the game world, nor are they a plot element - they just make it take a couple more minutes to get from place to place.
*** Like that accursed rock in Qufim Island that doesn't let players pass between it in the wall, despite there being clearly enough space to do so, and forces them to instead go around the other side and just hope they don't get killed by the living weapon waiting within hearing range. Anyone who plays [[Final Fantasy XI|FFXI]] knows what I'm talking about.
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** You could probably build Mount Everest out of the ''Frictionless Hills'' and ''Gentle Slopes of Unclimbability'' in the [[Lego Adaptation Game|Lego Star Wars series]].
** Not to mention completely cover Coruscant with vegetation from the various ''Impassable Forests''.
** Justified somewhat in ''Knights'' during the Tatooine
* The player character's behavior in the ''[[Myst]]'' series would seem to indicate that you are an extremely polite crippled geriatric... If not for your ability to rocket up and down flimsy ladders at absurd speeds.
* Related, in ''[[Myst]] III: Exile''. How many players out there have suspected that they could have taken Saavedro hand to hand? This situation was avoided in ''[[Myst]] II: Riven'', as Gehn and his goons always had you behind bars, or covered by lethal projectile weapons, or both.
** Saavedro even left a spare mallet lying in an accessible part of J'nanin. Of course, you aren't allowed to pick it up.
** ''Riven'' contained a great subversion as well: early on you encounter a flimsy wooden door sealed with a padlock. This door is insurmountable... unless you crawl under it.
* In ''Uru: Ages Beyond [[Myst]]'', the player can climb or
** At least Uru allows your character to swim (and makes up for it in one area by introducing currents so strong you can't fight them). Myst and Riven are fond of blocking the player from interesting areas using water of various depths.
* The ''[[Xenosaga]]'' series has particularly stupid example of this. Players will enter areas in their extremely large mecha, but solve a puzzle in order to circumvent a two-foot barrier. This is despite the fact that these robots ''fly during battle''.
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** ''[[My Sims]]'' has a number of areas blocked off by being boarded up, having a fallen log across the path, having a random pile of rocks in the way, or there being a metal door there. You start the game with an axe. You cannot use it to chop down the boards or chop up the logs; you have to wait until you get the crowbar and saw, respectively. You cannot climb over the rocks, or over the fence into the desert. You have to earn the pickaxe first. At one point, a door blocks a bridge with no rails on it. You ''can'' enter the water in most places where it exists, but you cannot pull yourself out of it onto the bridge. Looks like earning the blowtorch is the only way to go...
** [http://www.cracked.com/blog/exploring-the-mysteries-of-the-mind-with-the-sims-3/ This] article greatly illustrates the absurdity of the waist high fence on a couple different occasions. Surrounding his Sim's home with said fence, Firefighters are unable to reach the house when it catches on fire and are forced to stand around and watch it burn. Later, Child Services arrives to remove a child from the home. The Child Services agent is able to teleport into the home to remove the baby, but then is unable to leave because of the fence.
* In the ''[[Halo]]'' series, our hero does not normally have [[Super Drowning Skills]], but some bodies of water, especially in the third game, are "instant-death water of uncrossability". Even in the games that lack falling damage for normal falls, falling in the wrong place kills you, preventing [[Sequence Breaking]]. There's also Frictionless Hills and [[Invisible Wall
* The two ''[[Red Faction]]'' games not only made strides to avert this trope by making much of the environment destroyable, but also sometimes required brute-force breaching to progress with the game. This feature, however, caused those points in the game that were obstructed by indestructible architecture (i.e. most of the game) to become only that much more conspicuous.
** Ironically, the third Red Faction game, with its enhanced ability to destroy anything waist-sized and up, and jetpacks and sprinting that allows the player to reach just about anywhere, there are several [[Ledges Of Instant Death]] and [[Invisible Walls]], usually at the bounds of the map. The player can find even greater heights to jump from without fatality, or even sometimes without major injury, and still die when jumping off map-edge ledges, while the little posts with bleeping lights on them tell you that the dastardly EDF have erected an invisible wall in the middle of this empty field.
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** This also comes up in the boss fight against the giant Arcadebot, {{spoiler|which requires players to shoot themselves out of a cannon to reach the robot's weak point, rather than simply flying up there.}}
* In one level of ''[[Tomb Raider]]: Anniversary'', you come across several cages. With vertical and ''horizontal'' bars, which look like they could be climbed like a ladder. Which you nevertheless cannot climb, for a game which features all sorts of climbing (and actual ladders) in other situations...
** The series as a whole frequently uses frictionless hills, indestructible fallen logs/doors, uncrossable water/quicksand, and impassable foliage.
* In ''[[The Elder Scrolls]] IV: Oblivion'' it is possible, through the use of multiply stacked buffs, to attain superhuman "Acrobatics" skill levels, at which point the use of [[Invisible Wall
** This is a major step backwards from ''[[The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind]]'', where you could climb, jump, or levitate over any barrier, and wade, swim, or walk across any body of water.
** In ''[[The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion]]'', [[Good Bad Bugs|paintbrushes which are "dropped" remain hanging in air,]] allowing the creation of "invisible stairways" of paintbrushes to reach places unattainable even with stacked buffs. In case anyone wants to look for all the [[Invisible Wall
* In ''[[Nehrim]]'' (a game based on total conversion of Oblivion), not only the transparent walls are quite prevalent, the authors were quite fond of using "Ledge of Instant Death", sometimes becoming a "Gentle Slope of Instant Death" of "Flat Path of Instant Death". (after the initial cave, as the only path transfers from ledge to ravine, you can turn right crossing through some knee-high bushes (without even jumping), walk towards the waterfall and die for no visible reason at all.)
* Tony Montana in ''[[Scarface the World Is Yours]]'' is a clear offender whose trespasses include the ''One Inch Too High Ledge'' and the ''Gentle Slope of Unclimbability''. Despite being strong enough to run at a decent clip with a bazooka in hand, he cannot climb out of the deepest end of a ''wading pool''. Also if you swim too far in the ocean you get eaten by a shark.
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** Not to mention the doors that require ''obscure objects'' to open them. Why would the protagonists go searching for a blue jewel or a silver crest, when they can just kick the door down instead?
** ''[[Resident Evil]] 4'' however, with its redefined control scheme, makes it easy to just [[Action Commands|hit the Action button]] to jump over any sufficiently low fence when prompted. Of course, this only serves to make the game's proper insurmountable waist height fences more jarring when you have to perform an irritating [[Fetch Quest]] for a gate key instead of just jumping over the gate. On the plus side, a lot of non-plot-critical locked doors can be kicked down or blown open with a weapon, so it's a small step in the right direction.
*** Even worse was the 'Separate Ways' bonus chapters present in the [[
** In ''[[Resident Evil]] 5'', there's a [[Light and Mirrors Puzzle]] wherein the light ''kills'' you, and you have to figure out a way to point it where you want without blocking yourself in, ignoring the fact that you could easily get on the ground and crawl under the light.
** There's the scene where you have to wander around on a moving conveyor belt leading to an incinerator and littered with half-dead zombies, in order to get round a metal crate ''that barely comes up to shoulder height'' on the protagonist, who is strong enough to {{spoiler|move a boulder several times his size by punching it}}, but apparently can't lift his own body weight a few feet. To make it worse, the only thing preventing the heroes from going around the box is a ''handrail.''
** After the second battle with the Grave Digger worm in ''[[Resident Evil 3: Nemesis]]'', a fallen piece of fencing conveniently allows you to climb over a previously insurmountable rock. Although the rock looks like she could have climbed over it without the aid of the fence.
* The literal insurmountable waist-high fence in ''[[Paper Mario (franchise)|Paper Mario]]''. Early in the game, when you first get to Toad Town, you'll see a Star Piece on the other side of a fence. You have absolutely no way of getting past it until you get Sushie 5 chapters later, even though you can jump HIGHER than the fence to begin with.
** Or how about even earlier, in Goomba Village? Kammy taunts Mario, and drops a Yellow Block on the gate out. Even though Mario can easily jump higher than the nose-high fencing, he can't actually jump over. Same with the fence at the bottom of the cliff the Goomba house is built on: it, too, is blocked with a Yellow Block, and you can't jump the fence. But in both cases, this is a good thing, as if the game didn't force you to get the Hammer, you'd be stopped by later obstacles and unable to harm some of even the earliest enemies, but still, it's a good thing the Hammer didn't fall on the ''other'' side of the fence, or Mario would be stuck...forever.
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* ''[[Sid Meier's Pirates!]]'' uses a literal [[Insurmountable Waist High Fence]], to the player's advantage. During the stealth segments of the game, the player can leap over a fence to avoid guards, who, despite being able to see you clearly on the other side, are too fat and lazy to climb over and arrest you.
* Sometimes justified in [[Urban Chaos: Riot Response]]. Sometimes the obstacles make sense, like the fact the alley way is on fire, or the stairs are blocked by burning debris. Other times he can't climb over a single row of crates. But that could be because he is carrying a small armory by that time.
* Most racing games have the track walled in by insurmountable adamantium barriers; even the "plastic netting" is impenetrable. Sometimes, as in the ''[[Test Drive]]'' games, there will be open intersections with cross traffic, but they are blocked to you by [[Invisible Wall
* ''[[Gran Turismo]] IV'' has particularly strong plastic fences. On the Grand Canyon rally course, part of the course travels along the very edge of a cliff with only a foot-tall plastic home depot orange netting keeping a runaway car (or Truck) from careening off the edge. Somehow this flimsy-looking fencing handles the task incredibly well, even so far as bringing a full size Dodge Ram truck doing well over freeway speed to a dead stop.
** On some tracks in ''[[Gran Turismo]] 3'', you can glitch your way through the barrier. If you go too far out of bounds, the game freezes.
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** ''Eternal Wings'' makes a flimsy justification, then ''Origins'' explains it better; the wings used to be powerful enough to fly around all the time, but they have atrophied greatly over the years. Trying to use them for anything more than a few seconds results in the wings giving out. There's a reason these people use flying boats to get around. Granted, this still doesn't excuse Kalas turning around in Moonguile Forest because a log is blocking his path.
* Partially justified in the game ''[[Oddworld]]: Munch's Oddysee''. Munch is a Gabbit, a one-legged amphibian, and though he can jump more than six feet out of the water, any attempt to jump on land just makes him fall flat on his face. Abe, on the other hand, is a ground-dwelling Mudokon, and can jump really high on the ground (though he has [[Super Drowning Skills]], and can only touch water for a few seconds before dying). However, other Mudokons are too stupid and lazy to jump over a waist high fence, they have to be picked up one by one (by the ''ass'') and thrown over fences. Munch can also clear small fences by jumping over them in his wheelchair, or getting a boost from Abe.
* Apparently, this is so well-known that audiences at GDC '08 actually laughed when they saw a character in the upcoming ''Fable 2'' [https://web.archive.org/web/20111113104519/http://xbox360.ign.com/dor/objects/741361/fable-2/images/fable-2-20080220003911257.html simply jump over a waist-high fence.]
** Which will be a relief, as the original ''[[Fable]]'' was absolutely full of insurmountable fences, rivers, edges, invisible walls, weeds, etc.
** The fence problem may be largely gone but I've run into quite a few Gentle Slopes of Impassability.
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** Specifically, it forces you to {{spoiler|go through the [[Guide Dang It]] that is the Desert of Death to get to the final dungeon because your party, who often hop down cliffs exponentially taller than then, can't hop down off a crate barely as tall as Garr.}}
* [[Lampshade Hanging]] in the online game ''[[Graal Classic]]'', when Kull's Castle blocked certain doors with impassable Bottles. Your character is even heard to remark "I can't go this way - there's a bottle in the way!"
* In ''[[Diablo]]'', the town of Tristram is delimited on all sides by these. A waist-high stone wall to the northeast, a river to the southeast that's maybe a metre wide and 30
* In the ''[[Metroid]] Prime'' series there are some ''just too high'' cliffs that, if you exploit some cheap tricks (like jumping onto inch-thick vines) you can actually get over (and into glitch worlds, in order to do some sequence breaking).
** Most of Other M is in corridors and such, taking place in a large research ship and all. So for the most part the railroading and paths being blocked by reinforced doors is justified. But then there's this one missile tank, well, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_nS1ADTJY0 see for yourself].
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** ''[[Crysis Warhead]]'' doesn't. While you can drive down trees with your Armoured Personnel Carrier and blow up whole buildings with nothing but a grenade, you will still get stuck (sometimes permanently) in the same flimsy wood fences that you could kick down even if you ''weren't'' a nano-suit augmented super soldier.
* Parodied in ''[[Leisure Suit Larry]]: Magna Cum Laude''. When Larry examines a road construction site, he says it's a cheap way to block off the player from wandering off the level.
* Fences in the MMO ''[[
** And the uncrossable water appears as well. The several rivers that appear in the game are all uncrossable despite being a few feet wide and inches deep. And the PC is shown many times in the game to be capable of swimming, including in a couple of fairly large areas that are ''underwater'', yet cannot cross these very small rivers. On the other side, the PC claims that every accident including falling into water causes him/her to drown, even with the Diving Apparatus on. And, luckily, monsters also can't cross such obstacles, but some can be shot over. Coupled with the mobs' lack of any sophisticated pathing mechanics, you can get them stuck on the other side of a rock that is perfectly possible to walk around and shoot them to death.
*** One of the most awkward examples is on the border between a "[[F 2 P]]" area and a "
* Mostly whenever you see a fence in From Software's ''[[Evergrace]]'', it's to keep you from dying as the other side is either a puddle of water or a drop off a cliff. This in turn, marks one of the few times you'll wish for this trope's existence, since falling off of anything means your doom. In the bonus dungeon, there are no fences, but there are a HECK of a lot of enemies with knockback. Which turns a simple challenging dungeon [[Nintendo Hard]] instantaneously. Later on, it gains floors which turn from invisible to visible and back, slowly, enemies can come onto them, and there's STILL no fences to save you.
* Since you can't jump in the ''[[Perfect Dark]]'' games, any object taller than ankle height is insurmountable, e.g. overturned furniture blocking a hallway.
** The same goes for ''[[Mass Effect]]'', and generally most games where you can't jump.
* In ''[[Mass Effect]]'', while driving the Mako on story worlds the ''Gentle Slope Of Unclimbability'' was made the more obvious, since on non-story worlds you could make it climb almost any mountain no matter how steep, while on story worlds you were confined to narrow valleys with walls much gentler and you still came rolling down from them. On time, there was even a Insurmountable Waist Height Fence in the form of a big boulder, that should have made you impossible to go further with the Mako, but with some good positioning you could jump over it, leading to a glitch.
** In ''[[Mass Effect 2]]''
*** On the other hand, apparently the Lazarus Project ''finally'' taught Shepard how to jump over waist-high obstacles. But, of course, only in places where you're supposed to do so.
* While the world of ''[[Saints Row 2]]'' is fairly open to the player, 'homies' can't climb, meaning that they can't get past an insurmountable knee high fence.
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** Major example: After Central Silent Hill changes into the [[Dark World]], Harry is [[Railroading|Railroaded]] through town by larger and larger sections of the map being blocked with [[Bottomless Pits]], until there's nowhere to go but up, where you fight a boss.
** In SH 2, the above-ground path to the boat launch is blocked by a literal waist-height fence. To get around it, you must go through... the Abyss. And there's a [[Locked Door]] barring entrance to that.
*** Possibly justified in that you do not know that the boat launch is your destination. Your next goal is supposed to be inside the Historical Society building.
** Averted in [[Silent Hill: Shattered Memories]]
*** One truly bizarre example is when you stop at the ranger station in the woods. It shouldn't take less than 8 seconds to get out of the car, but in the time it took for you to pull up to the cabin and get out, a waist-high snowbank has formed over the back part of your car and in front of you, blocking you from driving either direction. Strangely, the snowbanks tend to be high, but formed in a way that Harry could scale them with a little climbing.
* ''[[Pikmin]] 2'' has short rocks in some of the caves. <s> Justified</s> But in this game, you can't jump.
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** [[World of Warcraft]] also has bizarre movement behavior related to PCs being either being able or not able to walk up gradients of differing slopes. While some slopes are always far too steep to ever be climbed by a PC, other slopes will either be passable or impassable simply based on whether or not the PC should be able to pass over that area, regardless of the fact that two terrains might have the exact same slope. In fact, there are passable terrains in the game that a significantly greater in slope than many impassable terrains.
** In Ironforge, the pit part of the forge is only blocked by an invisible barrier from the perimeter, but not pathway going over said pit.
** In an example of the "Ledge of Instant Death", there are several places where the game limits your ability to explore by killing you instantly if you fall below a certain
** The ''Cataclysm'' expansion averts and plays straight the trope. During development, the developers admitted that a lot of the geometry in the original [[World of Warcraft]] simply wasn't there, and they had to put unclimbable terrain in the way so players couldn't get there. With ''Cataclysm'', players can now fly in the original world, so Blizzard had to completely rebuild it from the ground up in such a way that the entire world was accessible via flight. However there are still unclimbable slopes if you are not riding a flying mount.
*** Of course, even with a flying mount, there are still a handful of invisible walls, like in the mountains north of the Plaguelands, which blocks players from entry for no specific reason.
* At one point in ''[[Leisure Suit Larry]] 5'', Passionate Patti is [[Locked in a Room]] by way of an Insurmountable Microphone Stand. This trope is in fact a staple of Sierra adventure games, in the form of impassable foliage, force fields, rubble, [[Super Drowning Skills|unswimmable waters]], laser fences, unclimbable hills, Ledges of Instant Death, etc.
* In ''[[Mother 3]]'', if you attempt to exit the first area of the game (which is the area around Alec's home), or try to go to Argilla Pass before you're supposed to, you will bump into an invisible wall and receive a message that reads, "There are ants at your feet. You might accidentally step on them, so please don't continue in that direction." ''Ants.''
** This is just an example of the series' quirky humor. It's parody if anything.
* In the MMORPG ''[[Mabinogi (video game)|Mabinogi]]'', some areas are littered with waist-
** Fences we can understand. Fences that a paper airplane cannot go over, not so much. Especially since the best places to launch the airplanes are always blocked by fences.
* In Spiderweb Software's ''[[Geneforge]]'' series of games, no matter how powerful your character gets, he is never able to break through/into relatively flimsy doors and cabinets. However, he is still able to pick the locks on such, using a combination of mechanical skills and [[Applied Phlebotinum|"living tools"]].
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* Played so very straight in Robert Ludlum's "The Bourne Identity" where most every object is an impassable barrier despite the player being JASON BOURNE. At one point it got so bad that a stairway was blocked by a simple red rope barrier forcing the player to go all the way round.
* ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'' has one specific moment where this is gratingly apparent. The protagonist Solid Snake, a veteran special forces soldier, runs down the stairs in a tower for several floors, only to be thwarted when the bottom five feet of the stairs have collapsed. Any normal adult could easily drop down that height without injury. Rather than doing so, Snake opts to climb back to the top of the tower and fight a Hind-D while Otacon fixes up the elevator.
** [[Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty]] has [[Player Character|Raiden]] winding his way through a labyrinthine machine for several minutes when the actual goal, a button or lever of some sort, would have been reachable by stepping over a pipe on the ground and leaning in.
** In one level of the fourth game, choosing to back track into the building you just exited is physically impossible. Apparently, this one side of the building is capable of withstanding bullets, grenades, C4, missile launchers, and even rail gun fire.
* [[Lampshade Hanging]] in Privates, where the player is frequently informed that "We can't get past these little velvety ropes just yet."
* In ''[[Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story|Mario & Luigi Bowser's Inside Story]]'', a good chunk of the game is spent collecting the magical [[MacGuffin
** It also has a pretty wide spreading example in Bowser himself as a playable character, since he can't jump, half his adventuring has you try and figure out ways round very small ledges that Mario and Luigi themselves can simply jump right over.
** Actually, Bowser can jump when he gains the Shell Slam ability, but only straight up into the air, and several times higher than the ankle high ledges.
* ''[[Rogue Galaxy]]'' is basically ''based'' on this. If there's a huge, open door in front of you but the room within it isn't displated on the map. You CAN'T get in. There's even a part where, after crossing a very long maze-like path across a mine you come to a point where the short way can connect directly to the elevator leading to the next level, but you have to turn around and take the longest possible way 'cause there's a ''rock'' on the way.
** Also, in the dessert planet Rosa, you have to get to some ancient ruins that are visible from the city's gates. And you are forced by [[Invisible Wall|invisible walls]] and
* ''[[Syphon Filter]]'': Grate blocking subway ramp? You can't use grenades on it, only C4 will take it down, from the other side. Hedge maze in Washington Park? No, you can't climb over the hedges. Cars blocking the road? Forget about climbing over them. And outside of cutscenes, falling more than about 10 feet kills you instantly (no falling damage in between).
* In ''[[Vette!]]'', large sections of San Francisco are blocked off by insurmountable fences, some waist height (No, you can't jump over them with low gravity, either). [[Handwaved]] in the manual as being due to "earthquake damage". And if you try to jump over Lombard Street, you hit an [[Invisible Wall]].
* In the first ''The Lord of the Rings'' jump-and-run for the [[
* ''[[Jagged Alliance]] 2'' lets you vault over fences and climb any house that has a flat roof. But you can't climb over crates, tables and pretty much everything else that isn't either a fence or a flat topped building.
** This is more a coding issue than intentional blockage for the most part. Fan-mods fix this up some.
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* [[Assassin's Creed]] justifies it somewhat with areas of the map blocked by blue mist rendered inaccessible until certain events have transpired: the player character is expressly trying to re-visit memories in a way similar to the original, so [[Sequence Breaking]] isn't allowed. It's even improved in Assassin's Creed 2, where it is physically possible to cross these barriers, but staying on the far side gets you "desynchronized" from the original sequence of events. However, it's played painfully straight with any and all doors in the games, which are never opened by the player character unless he's invited in. Apparently, the best and only way to defend yourself from the best assassins in imagined history is to simply stay behind closed doors. You don't even have to lock them. The need to assassinate one's targets only during specific events in which they are in the open and assassins' guild branches always having an open rooftop entrance may imply that the assassins are somewhat aware of this limitation.
* Used sadistically straight in ''[[VVVVVV]]''. In one level, the only thing stopping you from getting a Shiny Trinket is a tiny block in your way. So you have to go ''around'' it, straight through [[That One Level|"Veni, Vidi, Vici"]]. Speak to anyone who has played the game and watch them cringe.
* ''[[Super Mario 64]], [[Super Mario Sunshine]]'' and ''[[Super Mario Galaxy]]'' have MANY slopes that seem to have grease on them, making the player slip and not stand up. Mario, of course, can easily
** In ''[[Super Mario Sunshine]]'', this is even worse when you consider that you're on an ''island'' and could probably swim to each area, minus a couple up on the slopes, without having to go through the hub world.
* [[Black and White]] 2 creatures, despite being over one hundred feet tall when fully grown, cannot step over houses less than a quarter of their height.
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* ''[[Infamous (video game series)|In Famous]]''. [http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/5/27/ Cole McGrath is an electric urban GOD.]. Chainlink fences are his kryptonite. Seriously, he can climb anything, glide and ride rails and wires using electricity, but he can't climb a chain link fence? He's also stopped by [[Super Drowning Skills|water]], but that [[Justified Trope|makes more sense]] since he's electric, and the water grounds him out completely.
** The sequel, however, fixed this, even offering an achievement/trophy for climbing on one of said fences.
* Happens in your favour in Lego Rock Band. Your band knocks down a narrow tree which stops a
* There's an interesting case of this in ''[[Castlevania (Nintendo 64)]]'', where the main character can jump around and grab ledges just fine, until they have to carry an explosive material across several rooms, where jumping or falling even a few feet suddenly results in instant death. A usually quick walk to the area in question turns into a nightmare of side-rooms and death traps. All because our trained vampire slayer couldn't slowly lower himself down those last few broken stairs
* Probably the oldest case of this in video games is [[Zork]]. Yes, the waist high fence even existed before graphics to -see- it.
{{quote|'''You would need a machete to go further <whatever direction>.'''}}
** In the same vein, a large percentage of [[Interactive Fiction]] games involve locked doors that must be unlocked or
*** Lampshaded in ''Zork: Grand Inquisitor'': using a sword against most objects will result in Dalboz informing you, "Violence never solved anything. Well, not everything. Okay, not this thing!"
*
{{quote|'''Let's Play''': There's a Chryssalid here that's completely stymied by a two foot tall hedge. It's totally boxed in! It's too dumb to jump over the hedge! }}
* ''[[Onimusha]]: Dawn of Dreams'' is littered with flagrant examples of this, but none more aggravating than a point where your characters are faced with a ladder that descends from the top of a ledge to two feet above ground level. The bottom rung is no further from the floor than the protagonist's knee, but he must still wait for another character to lower it the rest of the way before he can climb it.
* ''[[Prince of Persia]]'' 2008 has the ''Ledge of Instant Death''. Despite the Prince being an excellent acrobat, he can't jump down more than 2 meters. At some points, Elika catches the Prince even though his feet already touched the ground.
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** Same with ''[[Winback]]''.
* Sam Fisher in ''[[Splinter Cell]]'' is a master infiltrator who can surmount most obstacles with ease... unless said obstacle is door with cleaning equipment in front of it. In some cases, the high-tech pick of Fisher is hindered by nothing but a mere ''broom''.
* ''[[Xenoblade Chronicles]]'' has a ridiculous one where the characters must fabricate a bomb to blow a way through a grid blocking a corridor. That is, despite the main character ''having [[Absurdly Sharp Blade|a sword able to cut through anything]]''. And even without that, your other characters have [[BFS
* In [[Orcs Must Die]], you can build insurmountable waist height barricades to channel the orcs.
* ''[[Rage (video game)|Rage]]'' includes a jump button, but places invisible walls in various locations to ensure that the player can't take the easy way out. Want to just vault over that wall and drop two feet onto the escalator down to the ground floor of the mall? Nope! Gotta go unlock the gate in front of it. Want to just crawl through the small hole in the fence that leads to the button? Nope! You can't go any lower than a crouch, so you need to blow a hole in the wall to enter the room.
* The ''[[Marathon Trilogy|Marathon]]'' series uses the Impassable Head-high Hole and Invisible Wall in a number of places.
* The western half of Peasantry in [[Homestar Runner|''Peasant's Quest'']].
* Literally within seconds of ''[[Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (video game)|Rainbow Six Vegas 2]]'''s tutorial teaching you about how your character can leap over obstacles you are blocked off from a potential alternate path by a sign on a flimsy chain saying keep out.
* ''[[Monster Girl Quest Paradox]]'' has several of the types in the trope description. It's particularly egregious since your party can comprise monsters of a wide variety of races, so even obstacles that would actually be a barrier to humans end up fitting this trope. A party of flying monsters can't fly over anything, a party of aquatic monsters can't swim over rivers or the sea, a party of fairies or slimes can't squeeze through small gaps, and of course a party of people who should logically be capable of levelling buildings can't break through a locked door. For the last of these, the game sometimes hand waves it as the doors being magically sealed, but of course none of the mages in your party can do anything about them. On one occasion, examining a jail cell door with the ditzy slime Lime in your party will cause her to squeeze through the bars... only for the others to point out that the door is still locked so they still can't free the prisoners.
=== [[Real Life]] ===▼
▲== [[Real Life]] ==
* In [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zJv0gssH2s this example], a little dog is seemingly not able to escape a cage made out of empty Pepsi cans.
** Similarly, horses and other large animals are sometimes kept in non-electric, unbarbed fence enclosures; they could knock down a fence section without even trying...so, naturally, they only ever break fences by mistake, because ''trying'' to knock a fence down doesn't occur to them.
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* Guineafowl have demonstrated a remarkable inability to get around an ''open'' farm-gate. Sometimes it takes as long as 15 minutes for them to realise they can ''fly over it'', so actually managing to walk around it doesn't tend to occur.
* [[Dave Barry]] wrote about his dogs who waited in front of a door to be let outside, even though the door was the only part of the porch that was still standing after a hurricane. Thus, they could have simply walked ''around'' the door.
** There was a video that appeared on [[America's Funniest Home Videos]] where the glass in a door was completely gone, for whatever reason. A golden retriever was sitting patiently at the door, waiting to go out. His owner stepped ''through'' the door, opened it, and ''then'' the dog went out. Same story when the dog wanted to get back in: the owner would step through the door and open it, and only then would the dog go.
* Pronghorn antelopes are apparently unable or unwilling to jump over even short fences (quite different from deer or true antelopes)
** [[Not So Different]]. The gas and oil pipelines laid across the northen Russian plains became a serious problem for the migrating deer herds there. Although the animals should technically be able to get over them, they are too afraid of an unfamilliar obstacle.
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** That's because most cattle grids are made wide enough that the animal's leg could slip through the gap, potentially crippling it, and they can't watch where they put their feet like humans do. It doesn't look like much, but a cattle grid is a very real barrier to its intended target.
* To an office chair, a guitar cable is one of these.
** Or a fold in the carpet.
* To people confined to wheelchairs, their whole surroundings can seem like one of these, especially in places that lack handicapped-friendly architecture.
----
=== Film ===
* In the film version of ''[[The
** Note that he locks the gate by ''reaching over to their side and locking it.''
* Seen in ''[[Hot Shots Part Deux]]'', wherein the crack squad of commandoes are stymied by a backyard gate, which has been "locked from the inside."
=== Video Games ===
* ''[[The Simpsons Game]]'' [[
* Lampshaded in the [[Everything's Deader with Zombies|Vietnam With Zombies]] ''[[Half Life]]'' mod Heart of Evil: our hero [[Running Gag|"sadly lacks the intelligence to operate" any vehicle he comes across,]] and Barney needs to be escorted to the vehicle to operate it. At one point, our hero tries to unlock a door, but it refuses to budge. Our hero "lacks the strength to open the door." Barney pounds it once with his fist, and it swings open.
* ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'' has a commentary node (on tc_hydro) about how its conspicuous waist-high fences are a major theme of the game.
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20140820150745/http://lolbot.net/index.php?content=viewer&id=24493 This] door in [[Fallout 3]] requires maxed-out lockpicking skill to open. This door that barely remains on its own hinges and has a clearly broken window, requires ''maxed-out lockpicking skill'' to open.
* Parodied in ''[[Stinkoman 20 X 6]]'', where the titular hero spends an entire level jumping over a small wall.
=== Webcomics ===
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20100623075724/http://www.adventurers-comic.com/d/0266.html Parodied] in ''[[Adventurers!]]''.
** Another one from the same comic features [https://web.archive.org/web/20130615073612/http://adventurers.keenspot.com/d/0047.html a chair].
* Episode [http://www.hlcomic.com/index.php?date=2006-07-17 #172] of the webcomic ''[[Concerned]]'' made fun of this trope as it applies to the game ''[[Half Life]] 2''.
* Parodied in [[Gold Coin Comics]], when [http://www.goldcoincomics.com/?id=56 Lance encounters a log in the road].
* There is an [https://web.archive.org/web/20131210130235/http://gprime.net/images/gifanimation/movie9.gif animated .gif] floating around the internet where someone wants to open a door. It proceeds to summon mecha, fire missiles, bash at it with oversized swords and hammers and finally drop a nuke whose explosion can be seen from space. When he is exhausted, the door finally swings open inwardly.
** The Japanese words at the start say say "Door won't open! Smash it down!!!" At the end, it says "if it doesn't work when you push it, try pulling it". Wise words, indeed.
* ''[[Penny Arcade (Webcomic)|Penny Arcade]]'': the one thing the [[Physical God]] Cole McGrath from ''Infamous'' can never defeat? ''[http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/5/27/ A chainlink fence]''.
* ''[[8-Bit Theater
* ''[[The Way of the Metagamer]]'' parodies this [http://wayofthemetagamer.thecomicseries.com/comics/pl/33451 here], although it's technically a justified example.
=== [[Web Original]] ===
* According to ''[[Kickassia]]'', Molassia is surrounded by impenetrable chest-high fence. Even Angry Joe's patented method of [[More Dakka|shooting it a whole bunch with his MP5s]] can't defeat the fence.
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* The short film ''[[College Saga]]'' [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPutYwiiE0o parodies] this (among many other video game tropes) by blocking the character's progress with a chair standing in the middle of the road.
* In a College Humor parody trailer for a [[Sims]] movie, a cop is standing on one side of a chest high, chainlink fence and literally calls in backup because, "There's no conceivable way to get past this fence!"
* In ''[[Two Best Friends Play]]: [[Captain America (film)|Captain America]]: Super Soldier'', Matt and Pat take delight in pointing out how illogical some of the obstacles blocking Captain America are.
{{quote|'''Matt:''' I'm not super enough or soldier enough to go up these one foot tall sandbags! ''50 million dollars well spent!''}}
* Lampshaded in ''[[
{{quote|'''Gordon''': What the ''fuck''? We installed bulletproof glass in our exit doors? That stuff's not cheap! How retarded are we? I don't even know anymore!}}
** The basic trope is averted; the author occasionally uses cheats to let Gordon lift himself over a head-height barrier or up onto a slightly higher platform.
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* Referenced in [[The Best Page in The Universe|Maddox's]] [http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=signs review of] ''[[Signs]]'':
{{quote|''"I have hind legs powerful enough to jump up 10 feet onto roof tops, the technology to conquer the non-trivial challenge of intergalactic space travel, but I'll be DAMNED if I can kick down this wooden door."''}}
* ''[[Cracked.com|Cracked]]'' Photoplasty advertises two variants in "Ads for Products That Must Exist in Video Games": [http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_273_26-ads-products-that-must-exist-in-video-
{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Video Game Difficulty Tropes]]
[[Category:This Index Is in The Way]]
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