In the real world, swimming is a skill that usually must be learned over a period of time—and that's just for swimming on the surface. Swimming underwater is another skill all on its own that must be learned, and even then, no human can stay under for more than a couple of minutes or so at the most without the aid of some special equipment, or some continuous training to boost lung capacity.
In fiction, however, this appears not to be the case. Video games are the biggest offender here. Any character that doesn't have Super Drowning Skills has a completely natural ability to swim like a fish, even if they've lived out in someplace like a desert their entire life.
Usually, though, they must acquire some special outfit or equipment in order to be able to swim underwater—but once they do acquire it, they are immediately able to use it like a total pro, and don't require any practice using it or moving around in the water with it whatsoever.
Then there's also the fact that in many video games, characters can swim and tread water for indefinite amounts of time without getting tired. In Real Life, swimming exerts a great amount of physical strength and energy, and gets very, very exhausting after some time, even for Olympic swimmers. Of course, they're also capable of walking for hundreds of miles on dry land without a break either...
This may be a somewhat Acceptable Break from Reality, however. If characters in video games had even remotely realistic swimming skills, it would take a lot of fun out of exploring underwater ruins and such, and it would be extremely aggravating for players.
Compare Super Not-Drowning Skills for holding your breath indefinitely, which can be considered a Sister Trope to this one; take note that if a character has one, they'll probably have the other one as well. Contrast Super Drowning Skills and Hazardous Water. See also Water Is Air.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- Stardust Crusaders: Captain Tennille, who possesses a sea-based Stand, is able to control water currents while swimming in the ocean.
- Diamond is Unbreakable: After his initial defeat from Josuke, Akira Otoishi was able to recover quickly to jump into the sea and swim towards the approaching Speedwagon boat.
- Golden Wind: Following Bucciarati's Line in the Sand, Narancia at first was hesitant to join, but after realizing Trish's situation was similar to one from his past, he immediately jumps into the river and swims fast enough to catch up to the others with ease.
- Stone Ocean: Enrico Pucci develops swimming at turbo speed by the use of his Stand upon diving into water to chase after Jolyne.
- Steel Ball Run: Despite his handicap, Johnny is able to swim and remain afloat in the midst of a lake during his battle against Sandman.
- JoJolion: Josuke amplifies his swimming during his fight with Yotsuyu Yagiyama to take him down towards the bottom of a river.
Comic Books
- Aquaman: Aquaman and Mera can both swim at incredible speeds.
- Paperinik New Adventures: Korinna swims at an incredible pace and seems to be able to hold her breath for incredible amounts of time.
Film
- The Croods: Despite the titular Croods having lived in a cave all their lives (and thus having never seen deep water before), everyone but Grug learns how to swim semi-instantly. Grug proves to have Super Not-Drowning Skills, as he sinks like a stone but doesn't seem to care (and has enough lung capacity to scream and run underwater).
- Subverted with The Poseidon Adventure. Belle used to be a champion underwater swimmer, but she's years older now, and although she makes it through to the other side of the underwater area and saves the reverend, it's too much for her heart and she dies.
- Mermaids has Kate Flax who actually wants to be an Olympic swimmer. She can already swim astoundingly well for a kid of her age unless she's drunk.
- Tangled: Despite having spent her whole life in a tower (and thus likely never having swimming lessons), Rapunzel is able to swim semi-easily when she and Eugene end up in a flood. To be fair, simply holding one's breath without actually swimming and pushing off the bottom to reach the surface aren't hard to figure out (and she might've just been watching what Eugene did).
Literature
- In Percy Jackson and the Olympians, this is one of the powers that Percy has inherited from his father Poseidon, god of the sea.
- Poseidon is a Greek god, sometimes known as an Olympian. This makes his son Percy a literal Olympic Swimmer (in that he is descended from an Olympian, not actually competing in The Olympics).
- Prince Caspian discusses and averts this trope when the children are contemplating swimming a river to escape from the island they're trapped on. They note that the only one of them who would stand a real chance of actually making it to the other side is Susan, who has "won prizes for swimming", but Susan herself points out that without knowing the river or its currents, swimming it would be a ridiculously dangerous thing to do.
- The Hunger Games: This is how Annie Cresta won her games four years before the start of the story. As the sole remaining tribute from District 4, the fishing district, she was able to last the longest swimming when the arena was flooded by an artificial earthquake.
Live-Action TV
- The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Upon reaching Valinor, Galadriel changes her mind and decides to jump ship and start to swim all the way back to Middle-earth crossing the Sundering Seas, analogous to the Atlantic Ocean. She swims an impressive distance for hours, but begins to fail halfway and is saved by chance from certain death, but it's still physically impressive.
Theatre
- In Jasper in Deadland, Jasper regularly dives into a lake from a height of almost 30 feet, slightly lower than the height of an Olympic Diving Platform.
Video Games
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons: Initially, players couldn't swim at all—with an Invisible Wall at the water's edge to enforce this—but the first summer update added wetsuits, which transform you into an unstoppable swimming machine. You can only stay underwater for a few seconds at a time, but can swim around at full speed forever without needing to rest.
- In the Assassin's Creed series, starting with the second game, the player character always has perfect swimming skills: never gets tired and never sinks no matter how much armor he or she is wearing. In Assassin's Creed III, the player can also swim in icy-cold water without suffering hypothermia or frostbite, though this wasn't the case in Assassin's Creed Rogue. There is a concession to realism in that you can only hold your breath underwater for a certain amount of time (in gameplay this grants total concealment from enemies) before having to come up for air. All other characters in the series have Super Drowning Skills, until Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag.
- In the Command & Conquer: Red Alert Series, Tanya Adams can swim across any sized body of water without slowing down to sink a dreadnought with C4. A few other infantry units from all factions in 3 are this as well
- Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time: In contrast to the previous game, the hero and whatever allies s/he picks up can swim indefinitely regardless of whatever heavy armor and weaponry they have equipped (one dungeon is entirely swum). They can also dive, and though they swim back up immediately, the player can just keep hitting the dive button over and over to keep them underwater with no ill effects.
- Genshin Impact: Every playable character is capable of swimming (and diving), with most of them having the very similar performance output. While the gender and stature of the character has slight influences, the advantages are mostly so trivial that it doesn't affect the player's experience all that much. By contrast, most NPC enemies have Super Drowning Skills.
- Grand Theft Auto:
- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Carl can swim indefinitely and never grow tired the first time he ever jumps in the water. CJ only tires from swimming crawl+, but can breast-stroke forever. Submerging is a whole 'nother ball game, though: his Oxygen Meter starts out very limited, but increases the more often you dive.
- Grand Theft Auto IV: Niko can't dive, but he swims like a dolphin: he can easily swim-crawl across the entire map, one end to the other, without tiring out like CJ. This is acknowledged in-story, too, as Niko had to swim more than a kilometre from a sinking ship in the Adriatic Sea all the way to the shore.
- Shadow Complex: Jason's pre-game fitness regimen included a lot of swimming, which adds to his skillset helping get through the facility.
- Half-Minute Hero: If Hero doesn't have a boat, he'll just swim across the ocean.
- Both Everquest and Everquest II have a breath mechanism, but beyond that swimming is just another movement mechanic. Both games have a Swimming skill but its only effect on the game is how fast you move when swimming. You can swim in any water forever without tiring or freezing, you can tread water forever and if you have any item or spell that eliminates the breath meter (underwater breathing or a Fishbone Earring or whatever) you can swim forever if you care to do it. In Everquest II, you can swim from one continent to another if you have the time (zone edge mechanics block this behavior in Everquest).
- Lampshade hung in World of Warcraft with Griftah the charm salesman, who sells charms that grant amazing abilities...that you already have. One of them (supposedly) gives your character amazing swimming ability.
- Super Mario Bros.: The titular Mario and Luigi. Apart from their Super Not-Drowning Skills, they've actually managed to out-swim torpedoes and can dash through the water in Super Mario Galaxy by spinning, using their arms as propeller blades. Lampshaded in The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3, where Luigi points out that Mario can swim better than most fish. Sometimes other characters are this, as well, but not very often, and certainly never quite as swift as the Bros.
- In Dwarf Fortress, your dwarves (and most other non-aquatic creatures) require at least novice skill in swimming to avoid drowning, and at least adequate skill to avoid drowning when stunned, which usually occurs when falling into the water. Other than that the swimming skill only affects speed, and swimmers only tire when selecting a swimming "gait" above the medium speed, in the same way they only tire when running or sprinting on land.
- Zig-zagged in the various games of The Legend of Zelda series.
- Probably justified in A Link to the Past. Link starts out with Super Drowning Skills, but is then able to swim indefinitely after he gets an item called the Zora Flippers, which are magic, presumably explaining why they allow to swim forever.
- Played straight in Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword, where Link can swim for an indefinite amount of time on the surface of the water. Underwater swimming does have a time limit until you get the proper items, but that's a different trope.
- Averted in The Wind Waker and Breath of the Wild / Tears of the Kingdom where there's no underwater swimming and surface swimming is limited by a stamina meter. Because the former game is set on an ocean, this was done to prevent the player from traveling between the islands without the boat. The latter game zig zags when it comes to the Zora Armor; it only slightly increases your swimming speed, but it also gives you the ability to swim straight up waterfalls rapidly. It's also somewhat ironic, since the Link from Breath of the Wild grew up around a lot of Zoras, and yet is a far worse swimmer than the Links from the above mentioned games, whose only exposure to large bodies of water would have been small rivers and ponds.
- Present throughout The Elder Scrolls series. The Player Character, regardless of race of background, can swim perfectly well even if they are in a full suit of armor and carrying hundreds of pounds of gear. Even the Khajiit, a Cat Folk race with a desert homeland, can swim without issue. Arguably Justified for the Argonians, Lizard Folk with gills who hail from a marshy homeland, who are canonically good swimmers (even conducting underwater guerilla warfare with this Exploited Immunity). Less justified is that they can even do this in, say, the frigid waters of Skyrim. This also applies to NPCs who, whether they are following you, chasing you, or simply accidentally wind up in water, can swim without issue.
- Subnautica: For someone whose role was essentially head janitor, the protagonist can certainly handle himself like a pro underwater. While lung capacity isn't that hot without proper breathing tanks, he never, ever gets tired even if he has to swim literal miles.
- Played painfully straight in Fortnite, which introduced swimming mechanics in Chapter 2. Suddenly, everyone can effortlessly swim on and underneath water for as long as they like, even against rushing currents and over waterfalls.
Web Original
- DSBT InsaniT: Due to being a lifeguard and friends with WG, Corla is an incredibly great swimmer.
- Tide is a fish person, so of course he's going to be a fast swimmer!
Western Animation
- Animalympics features actual Olympic swimming, but Animalympics being Animalympics, it takes it beyond Olympic swimming: When caught by a massive wave caused by his opponent, the ginormous Japanese orca Ono Nono, the Californian otter Dean Wilson resorts to riding through the tube, using his own tail as a surf board. Granted, being from So-Cal, he is trained in doing this well enough to keep cool all the time, but he has certainly never trained switching to surfing while in the middle of a swimming race.
- Darkwing Duck: Neptunia's main trait, as far as the Justice Ducks are concerned, is her fish-physiology and Super Swimming Skills.
