History Main / AlreadyUndoneForYou

* ''VideoGame/{{Myst}}'''s SpiritualSuccessor, ''VideoGame/{{Obduction}}'', similarly takes care to explain firstly that there are reasons for all the obstacles in your path, and secondly that they were purposely put in the most inconvenient possible configuration in order to slow down anyone trying to get through. C.W. sums it up in somewhat incomprehensible terms when you first meet him:

* Happens more than once in the original ''VideoGame/TombRaider''. Somehow Natla's pesky human hirelings keep getting to the end chambers ahead of Lara, leaving the traps unsprung and the creatures alive.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Warcraft}} 3: The Frozen Throne'', after Illidan proceeds through the Tomb of Sargeras to get the Eye of Sargeras, there are still a lot of monsters left for your pursuing group to fight.
* In ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'', you meet seemingly untouched ancient traps on your way to {{Plot Coupon}}s in locations where you, story-wise, found the exact same things three years ago.

* The legendary ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' module "TabletopGame/TombOfHorrors" specifically states who resets the {{Death Trap}}s and how, partially because the caretakers also perform a second function in the dungeon - punishing those who try to bypass traps [[NoFairCheating through the ethereal plane]], where they stay when not resetting traps.

Compare to TookAShortcut. Whereas that trope asks how a person got somewhere faster than you, this trope is more concerned with why their passage didn't disturb the environment. Sister trope to McGuffinDeliveryService where an antagonist instead comes in just ''after'' the hero (implying they've invoked AlreadyDoneForYou for themselves) or is waiting for them at the exit.

The complementary half of this trope is TookAShortcut. Whereas that trope asks how a person got somewhere faster than you, this trope is more concerned with why his passage didn't disturb the environment.

* The NES game ''[[VideoGame/AstekaIITemploDelSol Tombs & Treasure]]'' actually lampshades this in the beginning of the game, where the guide José tells the player that the monsters inside the ruins have rearranged everything to how it was before Professor Imes and his team stepped in and investigated.

* In ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaDawnOfSorrow'', Julius has just been [[ChunkySalsaRule beating monsters into a fine paste]] and leaving before they could respawn, [[AchievementsInIgnorance possibly unaware that they DO respawn if not sealed]]. Soma, who has been battling and sealing monsters the whole way, is understandably a bit miffed.

-->'''Max:''' How did you avoid all the booby traps?
-->'''Dr. Meyorkis''': I assume the same way you did, by reading the hieroglyphs.
-->'''Max:''' Yeah...well, uh...

* In ''VideoGame/PaperMarioTheThousandYearDoor'', Grodus enters the [[spoiler:Palace of Shadow]] before Mario does and isn't encountered until the penultimate chamber. However, that doesn't explain how he got there - especially since it is impossible to [[spoiler:return the stairs to the West of the tower to their original state (a corridor leading to Gloomtail) - and Grodus couldn't have dropped the stairs in the first place, since he obviously never solved the eight puzzles in the tower]].
** [[spoiler:He actually has Doopliss as Frankly trick Mario into opening the door by lying about Grodus having gone in already. He possibly goes past you and leaves the Shadow Sirens to stand guard after the tower puzzles]].

* ''VideoGame/GoldenSunTheLostAge'' is egregious because Alex discusses how poorly Saturos and Menardi (villains in the previous game, ''VideoGame/GoldenSun2001'') were at solving the puzzles, and they were so terrible, that they accidently [[spoiler:caused the incident that happened at the very beginning from the first game]].

* Averted in ''Literature/TheBandsOfMourning'', where all the traps in the TempleOfDoom trigger precisely once, and the bodies of the last explorers are still lying on the trap they triggered. The detective hero Wax gets a sense that something's wrong about the whole setup, especially after he sees that [[spoiler:the resting place of the treasure has already been ransacked. He doesn't believe that the treasure was stolen because it's almost impossible to get past the trapped hallway without triggering something, and resetting the traps would either trigger more traps by accident or take too long. He's right; the room is a decoy]].

* Averted in ''Literature/TheBandsOfMourning'', where all the traps in the TempleOfDoom trigger precisely once, and the bodies of the last explorers are still piled on top of the last trap. The detective hero Wax gets a sense that something's wrong about the whole setup, including how anyone knew how to get past the door at the end of the trapped hallway if the last people who came in died.

* ''VideoGame/GoldenSunTheLostAge'' is egregious because Alex discusses how poorly Saturos and Menardi (villains in the previous game, ''VideoGame/GoldenSunTheBrokenSeal'') were at solving the puzzles, and they were so terrible, that they accidently [[spoiler:caused the incident that happened at the very beginning from the first game]].

* ''VideoGame/BaldursGateII'': possibly blatantly played during the journey at Windspear Hills but with a caveat. After a dungeon filled with monsters and traps, there is one door leading to a secondary section of the map, where you find a party of adventurers-archaeologists looking for some items from the tomb of an ancient king. However, [[spoiler:since they ultimately turn hostile after revealing that they are robbers that only used you to get past a magical warden they can't fight, there is the possibility that they could be also mercenaries employed by the boss of the dungeon, or at least they have some allegiance with the orcs and hobgoblins defending the area]].

* ''VideoGame/GoldenSun'' is JustForFun/{{egregious}} because in the second game, Alex discusses how poorly first-game antagonists Saturos and Menardi were at solving the puzzles, and they were so terrible, that they accidently [[spoiler:caused the incident that happened at the very beginning from the first game]].

* ''VideoGame/BaldursGate'': Clair De'Lain right before the final level of Durlag's Tower. You just spent hours in that dangerous dungeon disabling traps, unlocking secret passages, unblocking doors, clearing hordes of undead and animated armors, solving puzzles, answering to riddles until the last one that unseals a magical passage... and then you find her. At least she tells you that her party had a very bad time trying to finish the dungeon.

** Possibly justified with the Egg Fleet, which, as a massive air fleet, [[FridgeBrilliance in which hundreds of airships are probably arranged in many instances of the same pattern]], you could conceivably see multiple characters travelling what LOOKS to be a similar path. Admittedly, a stretch, but still, [[RuleOfFun it's Sonic]].

** Maybe while he was dealing with the enemies, the next wave was spawned by the time X got there, just like with most enemies you encounter throughout the game.
** Actually an Aversion. Zero tells X he's going to deal with the enemies from the front so that X can slip inside through a back entrance (though since it's a 2D sidecrolling game you can't really go anywhere else), explaining not only why there were still enemies, but also why Zero had to teleport in when Vile appeared.

** Of course, the Cloisters are completely irrelevant to the actual plot, as the summons are brought about by the Summoner communing with their spirits. So not only does one have to wonder who's resetting them, one also needs to figure out why they're there in the first place.
*** This one makes more sense. The Cloisters house the [[spoiler: entombed bodies of those who were chosen to become the Summons]], and they'd want a trial to be sure the potential summoner was worthy of using their power. Considering how often Sin showed up, you'd also want those trials to be easily reset, in case there were no people around, like Ixion or the three sister's temple.

** A little FridgeBrilliance justifies this preemptively: almost every dungeon has some kind of back door that lets you get out much quicker than you went in. It's usually annoying ("why couldn't I have used this door and skipped the Draugr?") and tacitly justified by your character not knowing about it, but someone who knew more about the dungeon than you could conceivably use the back door to skip most of the traps and enemies.
*** The only problem with this is the fact that the only way to open it is to open it from the other side, so there's no way she could have opened it. However, it's implied that every Dragonborn gets sent there, and the Graybeards just put the horn back, since they don't really seem to have much of a use for it. So, the last one out could have forgotten to close the door.

** It's unknown if the main booby traps were original to the pyramid, but [[spoiler:Dr. Meyorkis is Dragonelle, an enemy of both Max and Rachel, so it is possible that the traps were set up after Dragonelle entered the main chamber.]]

* The ''VideoGame/GodOfWar'' series features this in spades. When Kratos traverses the dungeons to get to [[MacGuffin Pandora's Box/The Sisters of Fate]], he finds that hundreds of adventurers have died trying to get the treasure as well. (Their bodies are lying all over the place, and you even fight a few others en route in the second game.) This is all very well and good, except that not only do many of the doors require all manner of oddly shaped keys to open (from a ram's horn to ''specific human skulls'') but also in order to progress it is often necessary for Kratos to smash through walls and on occasion destroy entire buildings. Apparently the temples rebuild themselves every time someone eats it on the way there.
** {{Justified|Trope}} somewhat: the dead bodies of past adventurers are reanimated as Undead Legionnaire and are actually sent back into the temple to reset all the traps.
** Sometimes, the puzzles aren't reset to their ''very'' beginning, leaving Kratos to finish a puzzle that a now dead guy started. For instance, in ''VideoGame/GodOfWarII'', Kratos finds the Hail of Boreas [[spoiler:in the hands of a Spartan who got killed when trying to navigate a spiked floor puzzle. So some Spartan found the Hail of Boreas, possibly killing whatever was likely guarding it, and took it with him all the way down to a lower level of the island.]]

* ''VideoGame/GodOfWarSeries'' features this in spades. When Kratos traverses the dungeons to get to [[MacGuffin Pandora's Box/The Sisters of Fate]], he finds that hundreds of adventurers have died trying to get the treasure as well. (Their bodies are lying all over the place, and you even fight a few others en route in the second game.) This is all very well and good, except that not only do many of the doors require all manner of oddly shaped keys to open (from a ram's horn to ''specific human skulls'') but also in order to progress it is often necessary for Kratos to smash through walls and on occasion destroy entire buildings. Apparently the temples rebuild themselves every time someone eats it on the way there.

** Sometimes, the puzzles aren't reset to their ''very'' beginning, leaving Kratos to finish a puzzle that a now dead guy started. For instance, in VideoGame/GodOfWarII, Kratos finds the Hail of Boreas [[spoiler:in the hands of a Spartan who got killed when trying to navigate a spiked floor puzzle. So some Spartan found the Hail of Boreas, possibly killing whatever was likely guarding it, and took it with him all the way down to a lower level of the island.]]

* Played with in ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil4''. As Leon explores around the village, he will encounter locked doors with missing keys scattered about in highly inconvenient locations, typically not too far from the other side of the door, forcing him to take the long way around. [[spoiler:When playing ''Separate Ways'', Ada Wong found the keys in more obvious places, unlocked the doors, re-locked them behind her, and dropped the key somewhere out of the way. This sabotage was absolutely intentional, as Wesker ordered Ada to [[ButThenIdHaveToKillYou kill Leon on sight]].]]

* Becuase of the way [[RashomonStyle the story unfolds]] in ''VideoGame/SonicAdventure'', you'll have moments like this when you stop to think about the order of events (such as why Sonic needs to destroy the Kiki that unlocks Red Mountain if Knuckles had already been through the area and done the same thing prior to their encounter at the Mystic Ruins lake or, conversely, why the door to the Ice Cap area is still locked when playing as Knuckles as Sonic and Tails should have already unlocked it by passing through the area at roughly the same time).

* Drinno, the dungeon under the druid school on Gratogel in ''VideoGame/{{Albion}}''. Okay, so it's somehow full of deathtraps from a war between the druids and the Kenget Kamulos (a civil war so internal they fought it within one building, I guess), but how can there be a million puzzles and traps blocking your way when you're looking for someone who went through the whole thing not long ago?

* In ''Videogame/{{Albion}}'', you have to find a druid who has gone missing in a trap- and monster-filled dungeon called the Drinno. He seems to have made it to the end without touching any of the traps, monsters and puzzles blocking the way.