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{{trope}}
[[File:rsz_gamefucks__pokemans_by_rnzzz_6447rsz gamefucks pokemans by rnzzz 6447.png|link=Pokémon|frame|Insurmountable Waist Height Trees: [[Railroading]] you into [[Follow the Plotted Line|following the plot]] since 1996]]
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'''Soldier:''' Or ''climb over'' it?|'''''[[Concerned]]'''''}}
 
The phenomenon, found in countless video games, in which a seemingly trivial obstacle -- suchobstacle—such as a [[Locked Door]] -- cannot—cannot be circumvented or removed with brute force, [[Statistically Speaking|no matter how powerful the player character(s) is/are]]. This is more jarring when the obstacle in question does not mark the edge of the gameworld, but rather serves to force the player into [[Follow the Plotted Line|taking a particular path]].
 
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|Invisible Walls]]s. In fact that is often how they are implemented in situations where the game can't just forbid the player from jumping, climbing, swimming or doing whatever it is a normal person would do to get by the blockage.
 
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.
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=== Video Games ===
* Most [[MMORPG|MMORPGs]]s will make use of this, applied to NPCs. Just [[Shoplift and Die|threw a rock at a merchant]] and are now fleeing the entire, bizarrely powerful legion of town guards? Simply cross the magical loading-screen border between the ''Town of Generica'' and the ''Generican Prarie'' immediately bordering it on the right, and not only will you lose every last pursuer; they'll cease to exist in your reality.
* ''[[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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** 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 barrier -- thoughbarrier—though the player can jump in ''[[Final Fantasy X-2]]'', which has the interesting effect that the ''same geography'' which had appeared in ''[[Final Fantasy X]]'' could, in places, be approached differently, sometimes allowing new areas to be seamlessly integrated into existing locations. Conversely, areas that required swimming in FFX are no longer accessible in FFX-2. ''[[Final Fantasy XII]]'', however, is full of them, including the ''Knee Deep Water of Uncrossability'' and the ''Indestructible Fallen Log.'' Apparently being able to rend the very fabric of space and time with your magic isn't enough to budge an overgrown twig.
** ''[[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 levels -- iflevels—if you try to go beyond the marked barriers, you get text saying that venturing blindly into a trackless, lifeless desert ''might'' not be such a hot idea.
* 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 jump -- butjump—but cannot climb or jump over fences eighteen inches high, barbed wire lying flat on the ground, or the game's ubiquitous traffic barricades. (But at one point, his path is blocked by a simple wooden gate. {{spoiler|Jumping against it will knock it down.}})
** 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|Invisible Walls]]s, some of which are lethal. And [[Border Patrol]] in multiplayer maps.
* 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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* 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|Invisible Walls]]s by the game designers becomes apparent, e.g. when the player cannot cross some pieces of rubble, despite obviously clearing them by a huge margin. On the other hand, even an unmodified Acrobatics skill, in the upper ranges of what is normally attainable, enables the player to reach the roof tops in several of the cities, and from there the city walls and thus the outside of the city - which should have been kept inaccessible, since this reveals that outside world is only an empty, low-resolution copy of the proper game world, which one reaches by exiting through the gates. In the expansion pack ''Shivering Isles'' some of the guardians patrolling the landscape are stymied by a combination of ankle deep water - which they refused to cross - and a slope that was ''just'' too steep to be climbed at their normal walking speed, so that they ended up treading in place for minutes on end.
** 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|Invisible Walls]]s.
* 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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* ''[[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|Invisible Walls]]s. Said invisible walls also usually prevent you from jumping off the track to your doom. Subverted in ''[[Need for Speed]] II'', where you can accidentally fall off into [[Bottomless Pit|"the void"]] on the last two tracks.
* ''[[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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** 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 &nbsp;cm deep. The western border is blocked by moderately large rocks (150 tall at most).
* 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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** 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]]'' -- when—when you're recruiting Tali in Haestrom -- rubbleHaestrom—rubble blocks your way until you find nearby demolition charges; while it's as large as you, you've been shown performing athletic stunts before that should make simply climbing up a lot easier than fighting your way through all those geth. And naturally, you can't clear the blockage by shooting it, even with the nuke launcher.
*** 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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** 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]]--there—there aren't any doors with inexplicably broken locks, and Harry can climb just about any ledge.
*** 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 point-- regardlesspoint—regardless of whether you actually fell far enough to be killed, or had any Slow Fall effects, ''or even fell at all!'' The terrain beneath the airship at the end of the Halls of Reflection is an example of this type; travel far enough down the slope, and you will drop dead regardless of whether or not you actually fell.
** 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.
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* 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-high -- andhigh—and even knee-high or ankle-high -- insurmountablehigh—insurmountable obstacles; mostly fences, bushes, and rocks. The truly odd thing is that some areas have very low bushes which are insurmountable, while other areas have much taller bushes that characters can walk right through. This may be partly intentional; as it presents an obstacle to bots using the game's auto-walk map system.
** 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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** 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|MacGuffins]]s needed to get past the barriers blocking Peach's castle, completely ignoring the fact the barriers only block the bridge and not the very wide area on either side of it, which is even more ridiculous when you realize you have someone who can both fly AND carry both Mario and Luigi effortlessly.
** 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 [[Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence|unclimbable mounds of sand]] to take a complicated coiling road plagued with monsters instead of just ''freakin' running in a straight line towards the ruins.''
* ''[[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]].
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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 jump -- orjump—or even fly -- rightfly—right over the slope... and into an invisible barrier.
** 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 40ft40&nbsp;ft tall robotic T-Rex in its tracks.
* 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 circumvented -- youcircumvented—you can't just break them down. Unless the developer has specifically allowed you to climb or attack bits of scenery, you usually get a default message saying you can't.
*** 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!"
* In its defence, the fences are chest high and shootable in ''[[X Com|UFO Enemy Unknown]]'', but it is odd that your troopers are tough enough to hardly notice stepping off the roof of a two storey building but need a flying suit to get over a dry stone wall. Also you remember those dragon's teeth concrete blocks they used to slow down tanks in World War 2? In the near future you will be able to get a similar effect using a picket fence or a box of tomatoes.
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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|BFSs]]s, [[BFG|BFGs]]s, [[Functional Magic]] and other crap that could do the job. Nope, you gotta make that bomb! Did a ''[[MacGyver]]'' fanboy write this part?
* 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.
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[[Category:Video Game Difficulty Tropes]]
[[Category:This Index Is in The Way]]
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence]]
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