History Main / ChokepointGeography

** [[https://gameofthrones.fandom.com/wiki/The_Twins The Twins]] is the only crossing point over the Green Fork river for hundreds of miles. It's controlled by House Frey, who never fail to exact their toll from travelers.

* In ''Series/GameOfThrones'' (and its source material ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire''), the Neck is a narrow strip of swampland between the North and the rest of Westeros, impassable except for a single road guarded by the (ruined) castle Moat Cailin. Whoever controls Moat Cailin therefore controls all land traffic between the North and the South, very useful in wartime. This is similar to the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dari%C3%A9n_Gap Darien Gap]], a similarly impassable area in Panama.

* This trope occasionally pops up in the ''VideoGame/NintendoWars'' series, where a one-tile pass can be completely choked off by placing a ''fighter jet'' on the open tile. If the enemy force has no units which can attack a fighter, you've effectively created an unassailable buttplug that breaks the map in your favor.

* ''VideoGame/PerfectWorld'': Subverted. Usually, the only thing leading you to your next destination is a small path and a yellow arrow. This has led to certain new players ending up in places inhabited by [[BeefGate level 50 or higher enemies]].

* ''VideoGame/GoldenSun2001'' has this; in fact, one the few occasions were it doesn't have it, it's common for players to miss the town/dungeon that they were meant to go to first (for example, [[SequenceBreaking people attempting to go to Kolima and instead going north and fighting Saturos -- who is a very hard early-game boss with 2000HP -- and then fighting the first real boss, Tret -- who has 500HP)]].

* ''VideoGame/DragonQuestI'' utilized this with the swamp cave leading to the town of Rimuldar, the first of only a few places in Alefgard where you can purchase [[InterchangeableAntimatterKeys Magic Keys]].
* ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIV'': The FinalBoss is in the Overworld behind the FinalDungeon, since you can only take your active party into a dungeon. This way, you can use a magical horn to summon the wagon with your inactive party members, who can then swap in and out during the big showdown. You remembered to give the horn to one of your active party members, right?

* ''VideoGame/GoldenSunTheBrokenSeal'' has this; in fact, one the few occasions were it doesn't have it, it's common for players to miss the town/dungeon that they were meant to go to first (for example, [[SequenceBreaking people attempting to go to Kolima and instead going north and fighting Saturos -- who is a very hard early-game boss with 2000HP -- and then fighting the first real boss, Tret -- who has 500HP)]].

* ''VideoGame/GoldenSun'' has this; in fact, one the few occasions were it doesn't have it, it's common for players to miss the town/dungeon that they were meant to go to first (for example, [[SequenceBreaking people attempting to go to Kolima and instead going north and fighting Saturos -- who is a very hard early-game boss with 2000HP -- and then fighting the first real boss, Tret -- who has 500HP)]].

* Even in the age of long-distance air travel chokepoints have developed in airlines' flight networks, especially those in the long-haul business. Most major airlines use a hub-and-spoke model of route-planning where most if not all of an airline's flights fly either to or from a short list of a few major airports, or even just one, as this allows them to serve more destinations using fewer planes by using the hubs as a connecting airport and timing their arrivals carefully. Emirates uses Dubai International like this in order to connect many different cities in Europe with many different cities in the Asia-Pacific region without running into the ExponentialPotential logistical nightmare of needing that many planes to serve them all.

* On a more tactical level, Thermopylae Pass was what allowed a severely outnumbered Greek army to hold up and inflict severe losses on the invading Persians during the second invasion of Greece before being overrun, buying enough time for Athens to be evacuated before the Persians could capture it. The pass being so narrow in an era where most combat was hand-to-hand meant that the Persians could not capitalize on their superior numbers. This tactic was repeated a few meters away and about 2400 years later by ANZAC troops in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII during the Nazi invasion of Greece, buying enough time for Allied units to withdraw.

[[folder: Video Games ]]

* Subverted in ''VideoGame/PerfectWorld''. Usually, the only thing leading you to your next destination is a small path and a yellow arrow. This has led to certain new players ending up in places inhabited by [[BeefGate level 50 or higher enemies.]]

*** A new(ish) patch allows you to set an icon on your map that signals where you have to go (provided you check your quest log frequently), complete with an auto-walk/fly feature that makes a beeline to it; however, if you're not flying or paying attention you can easily fall down mountains, run right into walls or end up in higher level areas.
* In ''[[VideoGame/{{Diablo}} Diablo II]]'', the only way out of Khanduras (Act I) to the Desert of Aranoch (Act II) is through the Rogue's Pass, a narrow monastery pass through the mountains defended previously by the Sisters of the Sightless Eye and presently by the hordes of hell.
** Instead of having to go all the way through the monastery, there is a set of portculli that wagon caravans like Warriv's presumably take. The REAL mystery is how they got through The Underground Passage, a network of narrow, twisting caves just before the monastery.

** In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'', thanks to an MMORPG-like overworld, it takes very long time to reach your ''real'' destinations marked on the map. Most dungeons - whether they are plains, mountains, beaches, forests, or caves - are just there [[FakeLongevity to extend the amounts of running, fighting and minor cutscenes]].
* In ''VideoGame/LegendOfLegaia'', several such blockades exist: Drake Castle (blocking Drake Kingdom from Mt. Rikuroa and [[spoiler: Noa's]] cave; bypass-able [[spoiler:once Zeto's Dungeon is beaten]]), Mt. Rikuroa (blocking Drake Kingdom from [[spoiler: Noa's]] cave; bypass-able [[spoiler: once Zeto's Dungeon is beaten]]), the Biron Monastery (blocking Drake Kingdom from the East and West Voz Forests [[spoiler: and Genesis Trees]] and the Ancient Wind Cave), the Ancient Wind Cave (blocking Drake Kingdom from the Sebucus Islands; [[spoiler:the Witch who runs the inn here]] explains that there haven't been travelers since the mist came, so travel between Drake and the Sebecus Islands before then presumably had to travel through the narrow caverns and consisted only of people on foot or [[spoiler:traveling with Seru]]), and [[spoiler:Zeto's Dungeon (the mist from which blocks a passage to Noa's cave)]]. The Sebucus Islands go on to prove this game is filled with the cliche. Almost all of these literally follow the Mountain Passage premise, and those that do not operate in a similar fashion. Biron Monastery is a near-perfect example in that you must enter through narrow doors (multiple sets), proceed through the training/entrance hall, through a shrine room (close enough to a throne room), up stairs, past the sleeping quarters (barracks), and through another hall and up the stairs in the hall (multiple sets) and then out two more sets of narrow doors.

* The first ''[[VideoGame/StarOcean1 Star Ocean]]'' featured the city of Coule sitting right smack in the middle of a mountain blocking travel between Kraat and Portmith.

* ''VideoGame/GoldenSun'' has this; in fact, one the few occasions were it doesn't have it, it's common for players to miss the town/dungeon that they were meant to go to first (for example, [[SequenceBreaking people attempting to go to Kolima and instead going north and fighting Saturos - who is a very hard early-game boss with 2000HP - and then fighting the first real boss, Tret - who has 500HP)]].
* Especially annoying in ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarIII'', even if you're a Layan. Throughout the earlier generations, the only way to get to other worlds is by traveling through caves.

* TotalWarWarhammer: Has obstructions like rivers and mountains on the campaign map although certain factions (Dwarfs, Greenskins, Beastmen, Wood Elves, and Skaven) have the ability to bypass them. The second game adds chokepoint battle maps where passing to the opposite side is only possible at one or two points.

[[folder: Real Life ]]

** The Strait of Hormuz, which separate the Indian Ocean from the Persian Gulf (with major oil fields) - sink a couple of vessels (or toss some mines) in there and you seriously damage the global economy as 20% of the world's oil passes through it annually.

** [[UsefulNotes/{{Panama}} The Panama Canal]] - its construction saves several thousand miles and several months' worth of sailing around a notoriously treacherous Cape Horn around the southern tip of South America. Very useful historically for the United States, as with it naval ships could be transferred much more easily between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans as needed.

** The Bosporus and Dardenelles. [[IstanbulNotConstantinople Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul]]'s location as a crossroads of trade both over land and by sea made it a very lucrative trading destination through history. Militarily, it also allowed its owner to severely restrict other countries' power projection. The current [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreaux_Convention Montreaux Convention]] governs what Turkey can and cannot do in regards to other nations' ships passing through - during the UsefulNotes/ColdWar the US-allied government often used those terms to largely keep the Soviet Black Sea fleet within the Black Sea and not out in the eastern Mediterranean.
*** The Soviets, in turn, got around these legal restrictions with some [[LoopholeAbuse very creative totally-not-an-aircraft-carrier designs]].[[note]]The obstacle of being unable to get significant numbers of ships into the Mediterranean remained, though.[[/note]] They also turned the legal blockage back on the US on occasion - since the treaty stipulates a limit on the total amount of tonnage that can traverse the strait at a given moment, the Soviets would often just leave a ship there in mid-transit to prevent the US or other NATO ships from using it to get a ship into the Black Sea, effectively turning it into a Warsaw Pact lake.

* The GIUK ('''G'''reenland, '''I'''celand, '''U'''nited '''K'''ingdom) gap in the North Atlantic was a key consideration in warplanning for both UsefulNotes/WorldWarII and a speculative WorldWarIII for the British and later the Americans. Control of this gap (combined with British control of Gibraltar) meant that supplies and manpower from the US could traverse the Atlantic relatively safely to the UK or Western Europe - they could still be harrassed (as happened in World War Two) but large-scale interdiction by hostile powers would be nigh-impossible.
* The "Fulda Gap" of valleys in Hesse-Thuringen gained strategic relevance during the UsefulNotes/ColdWar. Thanks to geography, NATO planners saw three plausible avenues of attack for a Warsaw Pact offensive against NATO: Hesse/the North German Plain, the Fulda Gap cutting through central-southern West Germany, and up the Danube River through Austria. The USA drew two conclusions about their enemy's intentions: one was that the Soviets would naturally focus on defeating them by attacking through the Fulda gap so they could take the Rhein-Main Air Base and the West German capital. The other possibility was that the Warsaw Pact would launch a pincer attack with two thrusts, one on the north German plain and one through the Fulda Gap, and attempt to trap NATO forces in a pocket between them. Naturally, Warsaw Pact force deployments in East Germany encouraged these impressions as this would make the opening gambit of the actual offensive - on the north German plain, to trap NATO forces in a pocket against the sea - come as a surprise. The Soviets abandoned the idea of responding to NATO aggression with such an offensive under Gorbachev (having made no plans for starting an aggressive war, in accordance with Soviet ideological claims that there was no need to do so as Capitalism would crumble from within), and upon TheGreatPoliticsMessUp withdrew from East Germany entirely.

* This is part of the reason the Caribbean is so associated with pirates during the Age of Exploration - treasure ships heading back to Spain from the New World must pass through here in order to be able to catch the mid-latitude westerly winds to get them back to Europe.

* This is justified in ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind'' with Ghostgate. It was intentionally constructed as the only way through the Ghostfence into Red Mountain. It is full of the Temple's elite soldiers and contains an inn/temple for pilgrims making a pilgrimage inside for religious purposes. However, you can freely hover over the wall at any point if you have a levitate spell, which can be learned very early in the game. You don't even actually have to go inside the building; you just have to hit a couple of buttons to open the gate. This makes sense, however, as the Ghostfence is meant to keep things from ''getting out''. Given that most of what is contained within are deranged monstrosities, even hitting a couple of buttons is beyond their abilities.
* Shows up in ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion'' in the Planes of Oblivion, where getting to the central towers often requires going through a series of caves filled with monsters or in a looping path around the rocks at the edge of the map. [[note]]In theory: these areas are [[SequenceBreaking incredibly breakable]] though.[[/note]] Mankind is not privy to the details of how you'd actually launch an invasion from these supposed military installations.

[[folder:Non Video Game Examples]]
* Creator/{{Egoraptor}}'s ''Anime/DragonballZ In A Nutshell'' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi3qeROYDZc video]] [[LampshadeHanging hangs a lampshade]] on this trope.
-->"We need to go to some place that's completely desolate and that would never be in real life at all and its huge and its bajillion miles wide and its nowhere to be found on Earth, but its right over there."
[[/folder]]

* Parodied in Creator/{{Egoraptor}}'s ''Anime/DragonballZ In A Nutshell'' video.

[[AC: VideoGames]]

[[AC: RealLife]]

* In ''WanderingHamster'', Bob and James have to pass through the Troll Mountains to get to Lord Broaste's castle the rest of the world.

* The ''{{Lufia}}'' series uses this trope a lot. Caves feature stairs leading out (or in, depending on your perspective, but you only see the stairs once you're inside), and many caves are mandatory routes of travel from one place to another (without a ship or submarine), which would seem to make traveling with a wagon or any sort of vehicle difficult. Also, many of these caves appear to be dark and wet and leading horses or any wheeled vehicle down a slippery set of stairs in darkness is not conducive to safe travel (though there are monsters anyway, but a sword can't thwart the danger of slipping and breaking your leg). The argument could be made that the stairs are simply an abstraction, but they could have just as easily abstracted a gradual slope rather than clearly cut (and bumpy for wheeled travel) stone stairs.

* This is justified in ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind''. The only way into Red Mountain, the source of the Blight, is through an inn/barracks/base filled with soldiers. It makes sense, because it's stopping the blight getting out. However, you can freely hover over the wall at any point if you have a levitate spell, which can be learned very early in the game. You don't even actually have to go inside the building; you just have to hit a couple of buttons to open the gate.

* The overworld maps in ''GuildWars2'' aren't technically connected to each other, so geography is used to funnel the players to the portals that are used to travel to different areas.

* The GIUK ('''G'''reenland, '''I'''celand, '''U'''nited '''K'''ingdom) gap in the North Atlantic was a key consideration in warplanning for both UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo and a speculative WorldWarThree for the British and later the Americans. Control of this gap (combined with British control of Gibraltar) meant that supplies and manpower from the US could traverse the Atlantic relatively safely to the UK or Western Europe - they could still be harrassed (as happened in World War Two) but large-scale interdiction by hostile powers would be nigh-impossible.

* On a more tactical level, Thermopylae Pass was what allowed a severely outnumbered Greek army to hold up and inflict severe losses on the invading Persians during the second invasion of Greece before being overrun, buying enough time for Athens to be evacuated before the Persians could capture it. The pass being so narrow in an era where most combat was hand-to-hand meant that the Persians could not capitalize on their superior numbers. This tactic was repeated a few meters away and about 2400 years later by ANZAC troops in WorldWarII during the Nazi invasion of Greece, buying enough time for Allied units to withdraw.