Follow TV Tropes

Following

Suspiciously Cracked Wall

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/zelda_majora_mask_wall.png
"Yes, waste your youth looking for secret passages in rocky tunnels."
Comic Book Guy, The Simpsons Game

In Video Games (and probably elsewhere) if you see a wall with cracks on it, you can be certain of two things:

  • There is something behind that wall.
  • It can be brought down with a well-placed explosive or hit.

See also Notice This for unsubtle hints towards locations done for the player's convenience rather than to actually hide stuff. Sister trope of Conspicuously Light Patch which typically means the same thing for the player.


Examples:

  • In Banjo-Tooie, cracked wall = grenade eggs. Cracked floors also signal that they are able to be broken by a Bill Drill.
  • In Batman: Arkham Asylum, removable walls — as well as being explicitly marked in Detective Vision — are visibly cracked and holed to normal vision.
  • Breath of Fire IV: In Muktu, following the Northwest trail lead to a cave with an odd looking wall. Using Ershin's headbutt to smash it open will reveal a hidden passage going deeper into the ruins. This area is notable for being the home of the Rider, the strongest enemy in the game.
  • Castle in the Darkness has these. You can hit them with your sword to reveal hidden paths.
  • Goes hand in hand with the Castlevania series. Castlevania: Circle of the Moon has a approximately 4-pixel-wide marking for breakable walls.
  • Cracked walls are featured in CULTIC. Blowing these up with explosives is necessary to get to many of the secrets.
  • Dark Forces has them, esp in the level where you must rescue Crix Madine
  • In Day of Defeat, the walls that can be demolished by players' explosives are marked this way.
  • If there's a cracked wall in Dubloon, you can crack it open with your supply of bombs. There's also a more common invisible variation.
  • Devil May Cry: There are few walls that have holes and cracks on them. They also emit light to let you know that they're breakable and there's something behind them.
  • Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening:
    • In the puzzle room containing the statues crying Tears of Blood, one wall has a crack with an odd white light in its center, indicating that it can be broken.
    • There's a notable moment where you enter a room that doesn't seem to have anything in it, but there's a glowing crack in front of you. Turns out that there's a wall almost immediately in front of the door that you destroy to carry on.
  • Doom has wall textures noticeably different to draw attention to secret doors, sometimes misaligned or bordered but often with conspicuously damaged wall segments such as this, this or this. Played straight when the wall is set to open on damage, meaning you have to physically attack the wall to make it open.
  • Duke Nukem 3D has cracked walls you have to break with explosives.
  • Cracked walls are present in Hrot. These are destroyable using explosives. Usually cracked walls hide secret areas.
  • Genshin Impact has breakable rock piles that have a treasure chest or other things hidden behind them. They can be blown up or battered down (ideally with a claymore and/or a Geo elemental move). Just to make them more obvious they glow a bright colour when the 'elemental sight' mode is active.
  • In the first God of War.
  • Grand Theft Pizza Delivery: In the prison mission, you encounter cracked walls that can be broken through with enough bullets.
  • Hands of Necromancy has partially cracked walls, but they can only be broken by casting a shapeshifting spell turning yourself into a Rock Monster before punching it apart.
  • Heretic's secret doors were always given away by a telltale light beneath them, or a subtle change in texture.
  • The Legend of Zelda has many examples of these. 2D games also have fake wall cracks.
    • Although this only helps with fake walls that aren't cracked, tapping them with Link's sword produces a different sound than tapping a solid wall.
    • It helps with the cracked ones, too. The aforementioned fake wall cracks might even appear more often than real ones.
    • Some games, like Breath of the Wild, use piles of boulders in the same way, functioning as the cracked "wall" of a mountain.
  • Cracked walls were a critical part of Star Fox Adventures.
  • Ōkami has walls with conspicuous (which is to say glowing) cracks in them; once Amaterasu gains the proper ability, these can be blown open with explosives.
    • Battle arenas have cracks in them that can be attacked in order to escape from battle. The standard Zelda-style cracks are present, too.
  • These are used for Sequence Breaking in the first three Avernum games. Whether you can break the walls, and hence what you can avoid, depends on the level of the priest spell "Move Mountains."
  • The Metroid Prime games used this a lot, especially the first.
  • In Eversion, the more you evert, the more platforms become cracked and can be broken when Zee Tee steps on them.
  • In some Donkey Kong Country games you can destroy cracked walls with barrels or your rhino buddy.
  • The "classic" Spyro the Dragon games have these.
  • In Final Fantasy IX, in the chocobo minigame there are cracks in the mountains that can be dug for treasure. You can't see the chocobo break them because of the graphical limitiations.
  • The Jurassic Park video game for Sega Genesis had suspiciously cracked walls in some places in Dr Grant's levels. However, rather than signalling places you could blast through the walls, they signaled places where Rexie would break through and attack you once you got too close.
  • In Max Payne there is a cracked wall that will resist your attempts to break it. Until you try to open the door, upon which the whole wall collapses, leaving only the doorframe standing.
  • Defied in the fan remake of Quest for Glory II. Some of the walls of the streets of Shapeir look damaged, but when you click on them the game tells you that while in other games a damaged wall can mean there's something behind it, that isn't the case here.
  • Wild ARMs 3 has noticeably cracked walls and Clive has bombs.
  • In the first two Quake games, several secrets could be discovered this way. Especially in the second game.
  • When playing Left 4 Dead as zombies, a glowing crack appears on walls that can be broken.
  • Killer7 has cracked walls that can only be destroyed by MASK de Smith's grenade launchers.
  • Cruelly, some cracked walls in La-Mulana must be attacked, but others blast you with lightning when you attack them. If there's a way to tell which is which, it's not immediately apparent. Even more cruelly, there are some that take damage...but don't show it until after the first hit.
  • Metal Gear Solid tries to justify the trope by saying the boss deliberately blocked off walls, and that they are weaker than the ordinary walls. His men had them filled them in with plaster, but didn't have time to paint over them, so they're even easier to spot than the usual cracks.
  • Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire has certain areas in the overworld which can be turned into the entrance to a Secret Base. One of these is a strange hole in cave walls, which isn't so much a crack as a neatly-defined square hole. In a cave wall.
    • Pokémon X and Y has cracked walls that can be bashed open with the Rock Smash move to access the Lost Hotel in both Route 15 and Route 16.
  • Deus Ex: Human Revolution has a number of weak walls that your eyes' augments highlight automatically. Once the proper augment is purchased, you can punch through these walls, opening new paths or letting you get in a lethal surprise attack on enemies unfortunate enough to be close to that particular area. You can also knock them down with guns or explosives, but without the aug you'll have to pay very close attention or consult a guide.
  • The various games in the Paper Mario series each have their own cracked walls and a bomb-based ally with which to blow them up.
  • In Legend of Kay, cracked floors can be broken with the hammer, once Kay gets it.
  • Abuse also has these at times, which can be broken with any weapon.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • Sonic Heroes has some of these as a minor gimmick in Hang Castle and Mystic Mansion. These walls can only be broken with your power character.
    • The first Sonic Riders features a variant in Egg Factory: one part of the course has a sign that's not on its wall straight. Power-type characters, like Knuckles or Storm, can break down that wall to reveal a shortcut.
  • The RPG parody comic Adventurers! mocks this trope in an early strip where Ardam and Karn are trapped in a cave with just a chest, a model airplane, a cracked wall, and several barrels of explosives.
  • Mega Man Legends has various kinds of cracked walls which provide an endless source of frustration for first-time players: you encounter them as early as the first dungeon and, although you keep getting various explosive weapons throughout, you don't get to break through them until you've entered the final dungeon.note 
  • The Matrix: Path of Neo in one level has walls with glowing cracks in them, destroying them, by hitting, kicking or shooting, leads you closer to the end.
  • If you see a cracked wall somewhere in Knack, there's probably a treasure chest waiting at the end of the stairway containing a piece of a gadget.
  • Ninja Outbreak: You can break these to use as shortcuts.
  • Any time a cracked wall pops up in a LEGO Adaptation Game, it's an easy guess you need a character with either Super-Strength or an Absurdly Sharp Blade to break it down and reveal something.
  • In Kirby and the Forgotten Land, if a surface is cracked, it likely can be destroyed, often revealing secrets.
  • The Prince of Persia games have these, especially Warrior Within. Notable in that you need a specific weapon to break them - usually a powerful one that you get near the end - and the best upgrades are behind cracked walls at the start, so you have to spend half your time backtracking and trying to remember where they are.
  • In Pseudoregalia, if you see a wall that's cracked and darker, it is breakable, revealing new passages.
  • The Simpsons Game has cracked walls which break when Homer hits them.
  • Skully has cracked walls blocking your paths, which can be destroyed if you're in your default Strong Golem form.
  • Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer features cracked walls that open up secrets when blown up.
  • ULTRAKILL has a few cracked walls that usually contain secrets and shortcuts when destroyed with heavy ordinance.
  • Unreal has a few cracked walls that are often required to break them in order to advance. The Na Pali Haven level has even two of those.
  • Zombies Ate My Neighbors, some levels are almost completely made of secret-revealing cracked walls.

Alternative Title(s): Breakable Wall Hint

Top