History Main / OneOfTheseDoorsIsNotLikeTheOther

The name of the trope comes from, but is not related to, the old ''SesameStreet'' song "[[http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/One_of_These_Things One of These Things]]".

[[CommanderKeen [[quoteright:320:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/keenshot_9649.png]]]]

* ''TalesOfSymphonia'' has an interesting variation on TheLostWoods in the elven forest, in that the screens aren't identical, but taking the wrong path will put you on a different screen completely at random. Fortunately, the guiding critter in this Type 4 isn't hard to find and activate. The correct path also never changes, so you can ignore the critter entirely if you've played it before.

''By the time I finish this article?''

* ''{{Wild ARMs 5}}'' has a brief puzzle section like this at one point: You're inside a square room with 3 identical exits and one slightly different one. Most of the differences are obvious, but the last one not so much: [[spoiler:Shooting the pot next to the correct door gives you money, the ones next to the incorrect doors are empty.]] Bonus points for starting a random encounter if the short time limit runs out.

* The warp doors in ''SilentHill 2'''s Nightmare Hotel. Only one of the doors warps you to the other wing of the building.

* In ''TheNeverendingStory'', Bastian gets lost in a maze for a while before realizing that he has to pass through the door that reminds him of the place he wants to go to.

* In ''PokemonDiamondAndPearl'', you must must enter a series of doors in the Team Galactic base. Some doors lead to dead ends with trainer battles and items, and one leads to the next floor. The solution is [[spoiler: to follow the doors with a motivational quote next to it.]]

* ''Last Train To Blue Moon Canyon'' has NancyDrew find her way through an old mine, guided by a hand-held color wheel and the different colors of cave lizards that inhabit the passageways. Subverted in that you also have to search the paths that ''aren't'' indicated by the color wheel, in order to find all the clues to a later puzzle.
** Some early games in the NancyDrew series have you [[ShowWithinAshow win a computer game]] to access someone's private files. The in-game game is a maze, which you can win by always choosing the corridors that have a color motif you haven't seen previously.

*** In Bowser's Castle in the final stretch, there was a hallway that repeated over and over and over and over...you get the idea. Huh...[[GuideDangIt I wonder why those torches are hung like that in that order?]]

* In ''PokemonDiamondAndPearl'', you must must enter a series of doors in the Team Galactic base. Some doors lead to dead ends with trainer battles (And sometimes items if I remember), and one leads to the next floor. The solution is [[spoiler: to follow the doors with a motivational quote next to it.]]

* In ''TheLittleMermaid'' for the NES, the trick for getting through the final level was to go through the portals with flashing eyes.

* [[{{Karoshi}} Karoshi 2.0]] has one of these. [[spoiler:Follow the trash cans.]]
* A rather subtle instance appears in SpaceQuest 2, when the protagonist is swimming through some caves. At one point, there are two paths he can take. One leads to instant death, while the other allows him to advance through the game. Although this isn't mentioned in the game, in a published walkthrough guide called ''The Official Guide to Roger Wilco's Space Adventures'', which is narrated from Roger Wilco's perspective, he chooses the correct path to take explicitly because it looks to him like it's the 'road more travelled'.

* In ''Secret of Evermore'' for the SNES, there's a forest that will either lead you around in circles or dump you in dead ends unless you only take the paths closest to a bizarre blue creature that appears on every screen.
* In PokemonDiamondAndPearl, you must must enter a series of doors in the Team Galactic base. Some doors lead to dead ends with trainer battles (And sometimes items if I remember), and one leads to the next floor. The solution is [[spoiler: to follow the doors with a motivational quote next to it.]]
* Each of the ProfessorLayton games has mini-games you can solve during the course of the main story in order to unlock bonus puzzles, but one of the mini-games in ''Diabolical Box'' is actually required in order to finish the game. If you don't assemble the camera, you can't escape from the boiler room of the castle. There's only one visible exit (other than the door through which you entered), and the bridge which leads to it is destroyed. To get through this room, [[spoiler:you must take a picture of the boiler room and find the three things in your picture which are different from the actual scene. As with all other photographable rooms, you are rewarded for this with a hidden puzzle, which you must then solve to open the door.]]

<<|StockVideoGamePuzzle|>>
<<|VideoGameTropes|>>
<<|ThisIndexIsNotAnExample|>>

** ''SuperMarioRPG'' used Type 4 in the Forest Maze. There's also a secret path through the maze to some goodies; you can get the directions from an [=NPC=].

* ''PaperMario'' and ''Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door'' both had Type 2: the first in Bowser's castle, the second in the Palace of Shadow.

* The [[SoBadItsHorrible unbelievably awful]] SNES game ''Bebe's Kids'' pulls this on the player in the {{haunted house}} level: There's essentially only five or so rooms in the level, and getting out is a matter of passing through the doors and bookcases in a specific sequence, with a meter that changes colour to tell you if you're getting closer. Just one false turn and you have to start over, though. And like every other level in this game from hell, it has a time limit.

* A rather subtle instance appears in SpaceQuest 2, when the protagonist is swimming through some caves. At one point, there are two paths he can take. One leads to instant death, while the other allows him to advance through the game. It may or may not have been intended by the game's designers, but in a published walkthrough guide called ''The Official Guide to Roger Wilco's Space Adventures'', which is narrated from Roger Wilco's perspective, he chooses the correct path to take explicitly because it looks to him like it's the 'road more travelled'.
** There's no indication which path is correct, but once you go the ''wrong'' way, you have the opportunity to turn back (and you should, it's a waterfall, numbnuts). Once you go the ''right'' way, you lose control of your character immediately, which throughout the game has been an indication that the plot is progressing forward (usually).

* IllusionOfGaia had a peculiar example of this, though not with doors. To protect his studio and magical antidote, a crazy painter [[spoiler:who trapped girls in his paintings]] set up a series of challenges culminating in three pairs of rooms. You couldn't move on until you correctly identified what aspect of the two rooms was different. Also a bit of [[{{MoonLogicPuzzle}} moon logic]] in that, for two of the pairs [[spoiler:there was no visible difference between the rooms themselves. One had a difference concealed within a chest, the other was the effect the room had on you.]]
** They also did this with fully hidden doors, the only difference from normal wall being if there was wind blowing on you as you pass by.

*** [[{{Facepalm}} The Library!!]] Why didn't I think of that? I just figured it out through trial and error...

** ''[[MajorasMask Majora's Mask]]'''s doppelganger of the Lost Woods has Type 4: you follow a monkey.
*** Also, the path to Pinnacle Rock in the Great Bay Area. You have to follow a seahorse.

** In the final dungeon of ''TheWindWaker'', a maze can be navigated only after Link kills the Phantom Ganon in each room and sees [[spoiler:which direction its sword's ''handle'' falls.]]
*** Also, in the Forsaken Fortress, the correct path to the top of the fortress is marked by the lit torches.

** The original game had two of these, the solutions to which needed to be purchased from nearby [=NPCs=].
** In ''Link's Awakening'', the only way to get through the Wind Fish's Egg is to follow one specific route. And the only way to know this route is to read about it in the [[PamphletShelf library]].

** ''Ocarina of Time'' had Type 1 (in TheLostWoods, leading to the Sacred Grove) '''and''' Type 4 (in the pathless desert leading to the Spirit Temple).
** ''Majora's Mask'''s doppelganger of the Lost Woods has Type 4: you follow a monkey.

** In the ''Oracle'' games, one such maze has several eyes embedded in the wall. You always use the door that none of the eyes is looking at.
** In the final dungeon of ''The Wind Waker'', a maze can be navigated only after Link kills the Phantom Ganon in each room and sees [[spoiler:which direction its sword's ''handle'' falls.]]

** In ''The Minish Cap,'' there's a graveyard with one of these. Signs in each area tell you where to go. After a few signs, though, they stop giving straight directions ("Left" or "Up") and start getting tricky, with things like "Same as two signs ago" or "The opposite of the last sign."
** In ''Spirit Tracks'', one villager tells Link that he has to turn in the directions tree branches point in order to make it through the Lost Woods... [[spoiler:but another villager tells him that the fourth tree "has no sense of direction".]]

* In ''TheLordOfTheRings'', The Fellowship is able to navigate through the Mines of Moria once Gandalf recognizes than one of the paths has fresher air than the others.

* The [[SoBadItsHorrible unbelievably awful]] SNES game ''Bebe's Kids'' pulls this on the player in the {{haunted house}} level: There's essentially only five or so rooms in the level, and getting out is a matter of passing through the doors and bookcases in a specific sequence, with a meter that changes colour to tell you if you're getting closer. Just one false turn and you have to start over, though.
* In [[WorldOfMana Seiken Densetsu 3]] TheLostWoods offers a rather non-subtle version (but is missable). At night, the flowers leading in the right direction glow red. Pretty obvious to anyone who has played a game before, even without the characters in the game telling you, but can be confusing if you arrive during the day.