History Main / SequenceBreaking

** Choco Mountain has a skip where in the time trial, players could abuse the given mushrooms to drive up a wall near the start-finish line and tumble down right behind it, allowing players to finish a lap in less than ten seconds. 3-lap world records have fallen under 20 seconds due to this. It is harder than it sounds since the angle at which the player must drive up a wall is rather precise and making a mistake will have Lakitu carry you elsewhere. Only three people have done it three laps in a row.
** On Mario Raceway, it is possible to use a mushroom to jump over the wall separating the elevated portion of the course after the first few turns from the lower section of the course later in the lap. Doing this on all 3 laps can result in finishing the race in under [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reB36rhG4ms 50 seconds (NTSC)]] or [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pLdqQ7wmgk just over a minute (PAL)]].
** Wario Stadium in the same game has a short hill at the beginning that, if used in the correct manner, allows you to skip about half the course from the very beginning. For added fun, this brings you to another area of the track which, with enough skill, can be skipped ''back'' to the very end of the course. This leads to a track that generally takes about four minutes to complete having world records of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soQCw2tpw7M about fifteen seconds.]]

* ''VideoGame/NewSuperMarisaLand'' has two secret exits that allow the player to skip entire worlds. 1-4 will take you to World 3, while 3-5 will take you to World 7. You can even [[spoiler: beat the World 7 boss, which takes you to the final area, without having collected a single mushroom!]]
* In VideoGame/JazzJackrabbit 2, savvy use of [[GameBreaker Spaz' double jump]] can allow you to reach the game's secret areas without needing to hunt down the hidden teleporters intended to bring you there, as well as in some places create shortcuts that the player wasn't intended to take.
* ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog'':

** ''VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved'' has a major sequence break in the "Assault on the Control Room" level. In a stage about halfway through the level, one can get a Banshee fighter by knocking it off of a ledge with the rocket launcher. If you then fight through the following levels past the exit of the underground complex, you can then use the Banshee to fly up to the center column, where a new Banshee can be gotten to replace the (usually) now-damaged first one (even if you don't need it, you want to go get it to keep from being attacked by it as you pass and trigger that opponent). From there, you can fly over the following map sections to the one where you would normally have to proceed on foot underground; if you instead fly up to the overhead bridges, you can then enter at a much later part of the game, and because the triggers for the opponents have been bypassed, the following scenes will now be empty and you can simply proceed to the end on yet another Banshee that appears as you enter the last group of maps.
*** In the remake, ''Halo: Combat Evolved: Anniversary'', you get an achievement for stealing the Banshee.
*** This trick is also used to find the "Siege of Madrigal" EasterEgg music.

*** It's possible to jump off the bridge in the latter part of "Assault on the Control Room" and onto the large buttress that runs up the front of the Forerunner shrine that houses the control room, allowing you to skip a decent chunk of the level. You can either walk down the bridge to where the mortar tanks and ghosts are, or walk up it and slide down the side to land yourself in front of the door to the control room.
*** From the self-same "Assault on the Control Room" bridge, you can also destroy the Covenant mortar-tanks below you, before you're forced to face them, from relative safety (it's very hard for them to get an angle on you: the bridge is in the way). You can eventually kill those mortar tanks by just shooting them repeatedly with small-arms, like the plasma pistols and rifles dropped by all the Covenant you just killed. [[labelnote:*]]With a bit of practice, it's entirely possible to jump down from the ''very first'' bridge in Assault on the Control Room to the valley below. This will bypass the enemy spawn triggers and allow the player to saunter through the remaining ~90% of the chapter unopposed.[[/labelnote]]

[[folder:Other]]
* Normally in ''Pinball/AttackFromMars,'' the player must knock down a retractable drop target bank, then shoot a saucer to destroy the Martian spaceship. During multiball, however, if you destroy a ship, get one ball trapped by the targets as they rise back into position, then hit the bank so the trapped ball goes into the saucer, you receive a Dirty Pool bonus and instantly get credit for destroying the next spaceship.

* In ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS2E3ElementaryDearData "Elementary Dear Data"]], Data does this with the ''Franchise/SherlockHolmes'' simulations on the holodeck. As his android brain has committed the entire plots of all the Sherlock Holmes stories to memory down to the finest detail, Data manages to "solve" the mystery when the story has barely started, thereby subverting the whole point of the game. The simulation is reprogrammed to try to restore the sense of mystery to be worked out, first by randomizing the plot and, when this still proves too easy, creating a foe who's a match for Data: the now-sapient Moriarty. Trouble ensues.
* Any of the ''[[VideoGame/LEGOAdaptationGame LEGO Adaptation Games]]'' that features a [[CharacterCustomization create-a-character]] option will have this to at least some degree, since abilities are not chosen willingly but given out depending on which parts you use to make your character allowing some abuse for a savvy player. Most notably is ''VideoGame/LegoStarWars'', where giving a character a red lightsaber also gives him dark force powers, allowing you to interact with dark force bricks ''much'' earlier than intended. This was eventually used intentionally by the developers of ''VideoGame/LegoJurassicWorld'', where the "Attract Studs" enabling red brick can only be reached by making a small dinosaur (to enter the paddock) with a T-Rex's head (whose roar can smash the obstacle).
* In ''Webcomic/RubyQuest'', the players [[OffTheRails did this several times]]. The first time was sending a severed hand (intended to be used to open a fingerprint lock) up a pneumatic tube instead of using it where it was supposed to be, meaning that they had to wait a while before they could find the hand again. The second was climbing up a pipe to escape [[ImplacableMan Ace]], resulting in the DM, Weaver, halting the game for a while so he could draw up the room at the other end of the pipe, which he hadn't expected them to reach so soon. The third was [[CuttingTheKnot smashing their way into a locked medicine chest with a crowbar]], allowing them to get the Tranquilizer early and so knock out [[BearsAreBadNews Stitches]] instead of killing him, which they would have had to have done to get the key to the medicine chest. This sequence breaking actually allowed them to [[EarnYourHappyEnding get the good ending]].
* ''WebComic/DarthsAndDroids'' is built around this. In this universe the Star Wars film don't exist and are being told through a tabletop role-playing game, so from the reader's point of view the films take place in largely the same way, with some characters portrayed differently and some story beats moved around. From the perspective of the ''Dungeon Master'', it's a non-stop improv game where he's trying to adapt to the whims of his players.

* The most fundamental "sequence" in ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'' is the generation of mana. Each turn, you may play one basic land which generates one mana of its associated color when tapped. This generally limits the power of the cards you can get into play early on in the game. Certain cards other than lands sometimes allow for the generation of extra mana, but it is rarely a significant amount and they often have other drawbacks to balance them out. Many of the cards which make up ''Magic''[='s=] banned list are cards which put a [[GameBreaker disproportionately high amount of mana into the game for a low cost]]. This includes the infamous [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=382866 Black Lotus]], which brings 3 mana into play for ''zero'' cost (as well as its numerous "watered down" clones like many of "[[https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Mox Moxes]]" and [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=383000 Lion's Eye Diamond]], which despite [[{{Nerf}} being weakened]], were still unbalanced to the point of being broken). The extra mana allows you to [[DiscOneNuke play much more powerful cards much earlier]] than your opponent could reasonably counter.
* ''Pinball/MonsterBash'' intends you to activate the "Monster Bash" WizardMode before you activate "Monsters of Rock". However, because of how the activation methods for both work, it's entirely possible to trigger "Monsters of Rock" first. If you do, [[DevelopersForesight you receive a special bonus, "Rock Before Bash", worth fifty million points]].
* In ''[[Literature/MythAdventures Myth-ion Improbable]]'', Aahz and Skeeve are faced with a {{Magick}} treasure map designed as a puzzle. Rather than showing the correct route to the goal, it magickally alters itself to present multiple routes, most of which are deathtraps. Skeeve reasons it out like this: his own magick powers run on an internal battery that he recharges by drawing on outside sources -- and the map qualifies. He drains the magick off of the map and, sure enough, all the alternate paths vanish and it shows a direct line to the treasure, skipping over half the quest.

* In VisualNovel ''VisualNovel/EndlessSummer'', it's possible to guess Iris' name before finding the clue you need. [[spoiler: [[YourHeadAsplode Possible]], [[NoFairCheating but certainly not recommended if you actually want to live]].]]

* In the fourth ''Literature/AlexRider'' book, ''Eagle Strike'', the BigBad is Damian Cray, a celebrity whose latest venture is launching his own games console (in truth, the console is a cover for the vast amount of processing power he needs to put his EvilPlan into action). Alex plays one of the console's games, ''Feathered Serpent'', early on in the book, and notes that the game is extremely realistic, particularly in its depictions of violence and injury. Later on, Alex discovers the reason behind that: Cray built a real-life version of the game and forced people to play it, invariably killing them. When Alex gets trapped in this version of the game, he remembers what he did in the console version and, to escape, deliberately does things he wasn't meant to be able to do in the game, such as removing his shoes for better grip on a floor covered in water, doubling back after a PointOfNoReturn, and getting the bosses to leave him alone by faking his own death.
* VisualNovel/ZeroEscape:
** Sequence breaking is ''required'' in ''VisualNovel/NineHoursNinePersonsNineDoors'' to get the GoldenEnding. [[spoiler: During the Safe Ending, Junpei uncovers a clue that results in him learning a secret combination to break into a safe in one of the rooms that contains information about the organizers of the original Nonary Game, and it turns out that the same combination works on a locked coffin in a later room that Snake is trapped in. However, by this point, Clover is dead, and the game is on the fast track to a bad ending where half the party dies and the fate of the rest of them is uncertain. Due to in-universe time shenanigans, however, Junpei is able to suddenly know all this information before he actually learned it, allowing him to use it during a route where nobody (the [[SacrificialLamb Ninth Man]] aside) has died yet.]]
** If you know certain passwords ahead of time, you can reach some endings in ''VisualNovel/VirtuesLastReward'' and ''VisualNovel/ZeroTimeDilemma'', including both games' {{Omega Ending}}s, earlier than intended.
*** ''Virtue's Last Reward:'' You can reach Luna and Phi's endings before the game expects you to if you know the passwords for [[spoiler:the computer in the director's office]] (Luna) and [[spoiler:the numbered bombs]] (Phi). Phi's route does still have some plot locks that require the player to have cleared other routes in the game,[[note]](Specifically, [[spoiler:Luna, Dio, and Alice's routes, and the escape room in Quark's route, are required to get Phi's ending, while Sequence Breaking allows the player to skip K, Tenmyouji, Quark, Clover, and Sigma's endings.]])[[/note]] but Luna's route could potentially be the first route the player clears with the right knowledge. Though popular in speedrunning, this path is not recommended for a first playthrough, as the two endings expect the player to know critical plot points they would not know if they skipped the other routes, and have no shame in [[SpoileredRotten spoiling them rotten]], even to sequence breakers.
*** ''Zero Time Dilemma:'' The game does not expect the player to know Zero II's real name until very late into the game, but it still allows the player to input it earlier than intended. [[spoiler:In fact, if the player chooses to attack Zero in the three-way standoff, far earlier than the point they learn his name, [[DevelopersForesight they will get a secret ending and achievement for it]].]] With the right passwords, the player can [[spoiler:open the Force Quit Box]] and see the true ending without ever playing a single escape room! Again, this route is not recommended for a first time playthrough for story reasons, though is a notable category for speedrunning.
* In ''Literature/BofuriIDontWantToGetHurtSoIllMaxOutMyDefense'', Maple takes part in an EscortMission to accompany an NPC mother to a fountain in the middle of a monster-filled forest in order to get some holy water for her sick daughter. While the quest is supposed to require players to actually traverse through the forest and protect the NPC mother from the monsters, Maple, on the other hand, simply uses her turtle, Syrup, to fly over the forest and take the mother to the fountain without any monster encounters, with her not realizing what she did until the mother started to speak dialogue that would only make sense had they actually went through the forest.
* ''Literature/TheMummyMonsterGame'': In book 1, when Josh, Amy and Harry finish the game challenge for the four internal organs, the game tells them Osiris's body is next. Yet the next day, Harry is somehow able to skip this and win back his eye instead by playing on his own, before resuming the quest for his body when Josh and Amy get home from school that day. How is never explained, and it has no consequences on later gameplay.
* ''Literature/VillagerAWantsToSaveTheVillainessNoMatterWhat'': When faced with a monsterously tall dungeon tower, Allen uses a glider and parachute to get the loot at the top and then glide away.
* ''WesternAnimation/WreckItRalph'': Ralph skips most of ''Hero's Duty'' by ascending the outside of the tower rather than the inside.
* ''WebVideo/CriticalRole'': Done twice in the second campaign.
** During a conversation with the Ruby of the Sea, the Mighty Nein accidentally find out that [[spoiler:the Gentleman is actually Jester's father]]. Matt told them after the episode ended that that was supposed to be a late-game reveal, but they stumbled into it purely by asking the right questions.
** When the group travels to Xhorhas, they do so by digging into a tunnel that the Kryn soldiers used to invade Felderwin, then following it to its end. During the campaign wrapup, Matt reveals that that was not at ''all'' the path he intended for them to take, but they were persistent enough to make it work. Taliesin even mentions that the entire ordeal of opening up the tunnel felt like boundary breaking in a video game, since it was very obviously not the intended solution.

* In the UsefulNotes/AppleII and UsefulNotes/Commodore64 game ''SnooperTroops'', the clues never change, so it is possible to collect all of the appropriate clues, start a fresh game, and accuse the correct suspect as quickly as you can type in the clue numbers. Allowing for loading times, this should take about one minute.

* In an old UsefulNotes/AppleII game called ''The Alpine Encounter'', you had to find an urn with spy information in it within two days in a ski resort. The game has an incredibly elaborate sequence of how the urn is passed from enemy agent to enemy agent that remains the same each game; the trick being when you can intercept a drop-off. If you don't go ''anywhere'' until 9:45am (you can simply type "wait 2 hours") on the first day, and stay at the front desk entrance, you can steal the first spy's luggage containing the urn and call the Inspector (someone you shouldn't have met yet) and give the urn to him. This should take about ''30 seconds''.

** The UsefulNotes/TurboGrafx16 version of ''Prince of Persia'' is even more breakable by glitches. Using the "Game End" menu option while standing in front of a closed exit door allows you to go through the door immediately afterwards. You can also survive usually lethal falls by clinging to a ledge, which combined with the aforementioned door glitch renders levels 7 and 8 trivial.

*** The UsefulNotes/{{PS2}} remake of ''Dragon Quest V'' has a big oversight where the game doesn't stop you from playing if you open the system's disc tray. Opening the disc tray prevents the system from loading data, meaning you walk can freely on unloaded chunks of the world map, letting you go just about anywhere. Further glitches that stem from triggering events without the right characters in your party let you access the games DebugRoom without needing a cheat device, which can be used to add more characters to your party and max out their level. Combining these with an item duplication glitch lets you finish the game in under 40 minutes, as a child, without actually needing to "kill" the final boss.

* ''VideoGame/{{Sundered}}'': Embrace path has two skills that are perfect for this.
** Z'toggua's Wings, which can be obtained in the first area as soon as you get your first Elder Shard, allows you to glide over large distances horizontally with no time limit. (On Resist path, you have to wait until the second area to get a horizontal movement ability, and it only lets you dash a limited number of times until you run out of stamina.) It might not seem very useful in the narrow labyrinthine tunnels where the game takes place, but it quickly proves its worth. The second area has a large canyon that you can simply glide across instead of having to jump down to the bottom and painstakingly climb out through monster-infested caves, and the third area is full of wide open spaces, so you can cross most of it by air, which also helps you avoid a lot of the monsters.

** ''VideoGame/PokemonScarletAndViolet'' are open world games, which technically means you can go anywhere. Emphasis on ''anywhere.'' Once players obtained the [[HorseOfADifferentColor ridable cover legendary]], players discovered that you can scale up insurmountable cliffs by ''jumping backwards.'' This allows players to access areas that were meant to be accessed later with Hidden moves, up to and including [[spoiler:accessing the [[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon Great Crater of Paldea]] early.]]

** Using the "import character and pause at the start" exploit to avoid your items being erased by a script during the initial sequence, you can start with valuable items that you can sell right before the beginning of chapter 2. Well, you won't even enter chapter 2 because by selling those items you will get enough money to skip the whole part of raising enough funds to pay Gaelan and you will directly go to chapter 3... Averted in the Enhanced Edition, since the import/pause exploit was fixed.

* ''VideoGame/BaldursGateII'' has an early quest against a powerful blind beholder called the Unseeing Eye. Since your party is not leveled up enough until much much later, a direct confrontation with him is suicidal. To defeat him, you are supposed to assemble a magical rod through a whole new section of dungeons. The magical rod will heavily weaken the beholder. However, in one of the early shops you can buy a reflecting shield designed against beholders. It is so OP that it simply breaks every confrontation with beholders: you can ignore everything and simply go through the lair and destroy all, to the point that many players count this item as cheesey. It may be questionable if this counts as a true sequence breaker, since developers intentionally added the shield in the game, whatever unbalanced it might be. However, the merchant that sells this shield did not appear in the original release of Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, but was latter added to the game in some of the exclusive Collector's Edition of the game. She was later made available as a free-downloadable content and developers might have overlooked its impact to the early game. Even if expensive, it's easy to get the required amount of gold.
** Averted in the popular mod Sword Coast Stratagems (SCS) where the shield is moved to later and made more expensive, forcing you to deal with the Unseeing Eye in the intended way, and beholders can anyway telekinetically steal it from you.
** Talking of mods, there is another popular one that allows you to completely skip the first two dungeons (Chateau Irenicus) and directly proceed to chapter 2, thus avoiding the whole development of the plotline in the meanwhile which many players find too boring and railroaded after several playthroughs of the same dungeons.

** By pickpocketing the right targets or killing them when it is not supposed to do, you can get the required items for a door or a new chapter, skipping the whole quests that allowed you to obtain those items. This can lead to silly dialogues where are mentioned deeds that are never actually done or characters that weren't even encountered as the intended playthrough would have got. This is blatant in the Underdark where it is possible to skip a ton of quests and directly escape. However, sometimes targets killed (or turned hostile by pickpocketing) are required for the plot or later quests. Sometimes you just get instakilled by the game to prevent abuse, sometimes you discover a GameBreaker or a UnintentionallyUnwinnable situation: player is advised.

This is a subtrope of EmergentGameplay, and sometimes of NotTheIntendedUse. Contrast ScriptBreaking, which is often done via Sequence Breaking. Sequence breaking may involve the DungeonBypass, which is one typical way of breaking the sequence. Also contrast YouCantThwartStageOne, which is often literally true even in games that allow sequence breaking; even {{Metroidvania}}s famous for sequence-breaking opportunities generally require that the first area be traversed or the first item be collected. Compare {{Speedrun}}, which most times involves sequence-breaking. If the game recognizes your attempt in some fashion, or acknowledges your successes at it, then there's DevelopersForesight. Compare and contrast PlotLock, which is a door or passage that normally cannot be accessed until the plot allows you to do: a Plot Lock might be placed to prevent Sequence Breaking in certain cases, or Sequence Breaking could result in bypassing a Plot Lock.

This is a subtrope of EmergentGameplay, and sometimes of NotTheIntendedUse. Contrast ScriptBreaking, which is often done via Sequence Breaking. Sequence breaking may involve the DungeonBypass, which is one typical way of breaking the sequence. Also contrast YouCantThwartStageOne, which is often literally true even in games that allow sequence breaking; even {{Metroidvania}}s famous for sequence-breaking opportunities generally require that the first area be traversed or the first item be collected. Compare {{Speedrun}}, which most times involves sequence-breaking. If the game recognizes your attempt in some fashion, or acknowledges your successes at it, then there's DevelopersForesight.

* Plenty of poorly made RPG Maker games usually have this in some form, especially when a creator doesn't know how to use switches. Examples:
** There is often little to no warning about the monsters' strength, so when you expect to encounter a Slime (The first enemy in most RPG Maker games using preset troops, Ghost takes its spot in XP, and Bat does the same thing in MV), you may encounter Vampires, Succubi, and various other monsters that can bulldoze your team at that point in the game. Some even allow you to complete the game without fighting the final boss!
** Poor positioning of treasure chests or similar item sources can have this effect as well. Say the characters must move through a labyrinth or mountain range or such, are standing on a tile and next to them is a treasure chest located on a tile that is on a different "elevation"; due to the pseudo-3d nature of the engine, the chest can most likely be opened unless coded specifically to prevent that, which often saves a lot of walking around.

* In the first retail release of ''TwoWorlds'', it is possible to beat the final boss within five minutes with little difficulty. [[spoiler: The final boss is in the world not far from the starting location to taunt the player character, and will almost instantly evaporate the player if they try attacking. However, if you throw a range attack at the boss, he will chase you into a nearby village. His fireballs do splash damage, so if you stand next to a villager when the fireball is launched, the entire village will become hostile and dog pile the final boss. While the final boss is powerful, he is quickly overwhelmed and will die to the village's onslaught. His death triggers the end cutscene, and ends the game. This exploit was patched out soon after the game launched.]]

* In VisualNovel ''VisualNovel/EndlessSummer'', it's possible to guess Iris' name before finding the clue you need. [[spoiler: [[YourHeadAsplode Possible]], [[NoFairCheating but certainly not recommended if you actually want to live]].]] ]]

*** There is a town named Hay that is being assaulted by a monster in a cave. The game expects you to skip over Hay and move right to learn Zoom and get married. When you come back to the port with your wife, a character from Hay will run in and ask that you kill the monster, he'll even give you 1500 gold coins as an advance. However, if you go to the cave immediately when you land on the continent, you can have already taken care of the monster, [[spoiler:its your tiger from when you were a kid]]. So the townspeople of Hay are freaking out over a monster threat you could have taken care of hours ago. They'll still give you the reward money though. Just talk to them again and they'll act you just finished the quest.