History Main / OneOfTheseDoorsIsNotLikeTheOther

* The ''VideoGame/Fallout4'' [=DLC=] ''Nuka-World'' has a brief one in the Fun House, which consists of a circular spinning room with thankfully non-identical doors around its circumference. Opening the doors will give you various rewards, such as a parody of the "Dogs Playing Poker" painting, or a flamethrower to the face.

* In the Black Forest subquest of ''VideoGame/ShadowHeartsCovenant'', you must follow the instructions of talking flowers to find your way through to the end. Different colors of flowers will tell the true way or send you on a path back to the beginning, depending on the order in which you talk to them. Subverted at the end in that instead of following the white flower, like you had the whole maze, the way to get to the boss is to listen to the black flower. If you listen to the white flower at the end of the maze, it will result in a NonstandardGameOver as you get lost in the Black Forest forever.

** In the first game, the way through Mogall Forest is indicated by following a cowardly ape, who takes the correct path through the forest.

** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaMajorasMask''': The Woods of Mystery in Southern Swamp has you follow a monkey across hollow tunnels to avoid getting lost and returning to the entrance; unlike the Lost Woods in Ocarina of Time, the correct path changes every day, but the monkey has memorized all patterns. The path to Pinnacle Rock in the Great Bay Area is similar, only there the "doors" are invisible paths within the ocean surrounded by murky water, and you have to follow a seahorse.

** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaMajorasMask's'' doppelganger of the Lost Woods has you follow a monkey. The path to Pinnacle Rock in the Great Bay Area is similar, you have to follow a seahorse.
** The monkey scenario is a CallBack to a similar one in ''A Link to the Past'', though that was less a matter of picking the right door than finding secret openings in seemingly solid hedges.

** In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess'', you have to navigate TheLostWoods by following the Skull Kid and keeping tabs on where his light can be spotted.

** In Charlotte/Kevin's routes, the final dungeon is hidden beyond the [[TheMaze Jungle of Illusion]], and the maze must be navigated by listening to the sound that plays when you pick a path.

** ''VideoGame/PaperMario'' and ''VideoGame/PaperMarioTheThousandYearDoor'' both had marked doors: the first in Bowser's castle, the second in the Palace of Shadow.
** The original Paper Mario also had the path through the forest to Bow's mansion; each area had a different identifier that you used Goombario's field ability to learn.

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

* The unbelievably awful SNES game ''Bebe's Kids'' pulls this on the player in the HauntedHouse 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 color 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.

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
* ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheLastCrusade'': The Temple of the Sun has one of these in the form of the "Word of God" puzzle, a series of lettered tiles on the floor. Stepping on the wrong ones would cause them to break through, sending the hapless person into a chasm below the floor. The correct sequence is the spelling of God's name, Jehovah ([[spoiler:spelt in Latin where it begins with an I, as Indy nearly died finding out]]).
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* In ''Literature/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.
* In ''Literature/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.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]
* ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros'':
** ''VideoGame/PaperMario'' and ''VideoGame/PaperMarioTheThousandYearDoor'' both had marked doors: the first in Bowser's castle, the second in the Palace of Shadow.
** The original Paper Mario also had the path through the forest to Bow's mansion; each area had a different identifier that you used Goombario's field ability to learn.
** ''VideoGame/SuperMarioRPG'' has the Forest Maze, where you follow Geno for the correct path (and then pay attention to environmental cues for the last couple of turns). There's also a secret path through the maze to some goodies; you can get the directions from an [=NPC=].
** The [=DS=] version of ''VideoGame/SuperMario64'' has you follow music when rescuing Luigi from King Boo’s lair.

* In ''VideoGame/Killer7'', at one point you navigate by the sound of a singer's voice. Thing is, you can't do so just by listening. Instead, you have to switch to Con Smith: He's blind, so via DisabilitySuperpower he can "see" the music as sound waves.

* In the Black Forest subquest of ''VideoGame/ShadowHeartsCovenant'', you must follow the instructions of talking flowers to find your way through to the end. Different colors of flowers will tell the true way or send you on a path back to the beginning, depending on the order in which you talk to them. Subverted at the end in that instead of following the white flower, like you had the whole maze, the way to get to the boss is to listen to the black flower. If you listen to the white flower at the end of the maze, it will result in a NonstandardGameOver as you get lost in the Black Forest forever.
* The unbelievably awful SNES game ''Bebe's Kids'' pulls this on the player in the HauntedHouse 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 color 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.
* In ''VideoGame/TrialsOfMana'':
** [[TheLostWoods the Lampbloom Woods]] offers a rather non-subtle (but is missable) version. 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.
** In Charlotte/Kevin's routes, the final dungeon is hidden beyond the [[TheMaze Jungle of Illusion]], and the maze must be navigated by listening to the sound that plays when you pick a path.

* In ''VideoGame/KirbysDreamLand3'' for the SNES, one level has several sets of three doors. But if you use Kine (the fish) with the Spark power, you get this light bulb which reveals X's over the wrong doors and O's over the right one.
* ''VideoGame/IllusionOfGaia'':
** In some areas, there appears to be no door at all, but paying careful attention to [[spoiler:the wind, or else the sound made by striking]] reveals the secret.
** There's actually an area that follows this trope exactly: Will has to visit a set of two rooms and point out the differences between them to continue. These differences can be easy [[spoiler:number or color of pots]] or hard [[spoiler:the contents of a chest or the wind blowing through Will's hair]]. The [[spoiler:chest]] one is particularly tricky because the rooms are ''completely'' identical... [[spoiler:until you open the chest in one.]]
* ''VideoGame/WildArms5'' 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.
* ''VideoGame/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 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.
** There's also the teleport pads in the Palmacosta Ranch, which appear to be MagicalMysteryDoors until you use the Sorcerer's Ring and discover that there's a shiny dot (which indicates a hidden item) next to the pad that advances you toward the boss room. Of course, picking up the item destroys the clue (unless it's actually a booby trap that summons guards on you), so you'd better remember which was the right way. And again, you can ignore it entirely if you've played the game often enough to memorize the right sequence.
* ''VideoGame/TalesOfDestiny'' had this too in Tiberius's castle; in which the way through was according to the Zodiac and its twelve signs. The correct way would be identified if only that particular door lit up.
* ''VideoGame/TheClueFinders'' games commonly use this trope; but it's actually to test critical thinking. For example, you will be asked to identify what's different from the others in a few of the games' activities.
* ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry4'' in the forest level, sort of. You have to make sure your shadow is behind you.
* This trope came up in the original text-based ''Zork''. A lot.

* The warp doors in ''VideoGame/SilentHill2'''s Nightmare Hotel. Only one of the doors warps you to the other wing of the building.
* ''[[VideoGame/{{Karoshi}} Karoshi 2.0]]'' has one of these. [[spoiler:Follow the trash cans.]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Spectrobes}}: Origins'':
** Slayso Tower has three different rooms with seven exit doors each, six of which lead to broken elevators and a Krawl fight. [[spoiler:The correct doors to go through are (in order) the one with the different pattern, the one that you can hear wind through, and the one the Child Spectrobe identifies when sent searching (which most players would not have done due to the lack of hidden items in the rooms.]] Thankfully, if the player keeps choosing incorrectly, Rallen and Jeena will hint at, and eventually reveal, how to find the correct door.
** The legendary weapons on each of those floors can similarly be found through the distinctive humming noise they make, which can be heard through the door.
* ''VideoGame/SecretOfEvermore'' has 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 ''VideoGame/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.]]
* Each of the ''VideoGame/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.]]
* One of the puzzles in ''VideoGame/JollyRover'' has you [[MakesSenseInContext using an enchanted conch to listen for ghosts singing]] by using it on one of four caves.
* The first dungeon in ''VideoGame/DragonQuestVII'' has a series of rooms that branch into four hallways. The trick is that each room has a mural hanging in the center showing a tree with four branches; you have to follow the path marked by a leaf.

* The final level of TNT: Evilution, half of Final ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'', has a large field of platforms with large candles on them burning with different coloured flames. Stepping on the wrong platform is instant death, not too dissimilar in principle to the Film/IndianaJonesAndTheLastCrusade example. The correct sequence is given in the rows of colored torches in the previous room.

* ''VideoGame/TheSecretOfMonkeyIsland'' has a scenario where you have to follow the shopkeeper to find the path to the Sword Master's house; fortunately, the shopkeeper is sweet on the Sword Master, and will go out to see her as many times as you ask, even though she always tells him to get lost. Her house is added to the map screen afterwards, saving you the trouble for subsequent visits. The same mechanic recurs in ''[[VideoGame/EscapeFromMonkeyIsland Escape]]'' which has you following Ozzie Mandril through the jungle to find his secret treasure horde. Once there, you're on your own to figure out how to get inside.
* The ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 4}}'' [=DLC=] ''Nuka-World'' has a brief one in the Fun House, which consists of a circular spinning room with thankfully non-identical doors around its circumference. Opening the doors will give you various rewards, such as a parody of the "Dogs Playing Poker" painting, or a flamethrower to the face.
* ''VideoGame/SpookysJumpScareMansion'' has one of these as one of it's randomly generated rooms, with the correct path through it also randomly generated. Getting through is is mostly trial-and-error, but the game clearly indicates if you've gone in the correct direction with a ''*ding*'' sound (and an incorrect direction with a *da-''dum''* sound) and there is no penalty for choosing an incorrect direction aside from having to start over.
* ''VideoGame/LaMulana2'' has a particularly devious one in the [[spoiler:Underworld]]: [[spoiler:The player must traverse a route of 7 specific doors to get to the area boss, using hints scattered throughout the rest of the game. If they take a wrong door, they're ejected from the area and have to start over. However, some of the doors periodically lead to a completely different room that contains an important treasure but also contains a miniboss that can't be defeated the traditional way because it is a literal mirror image of the player. The only way to know which doors these are, outside of trial-and-error and lucky timing, is to pick up a certain item elsewhere in the ruins and to watch for the eyes over the doors to glow green. Said treasure also makes the wrong doors glow with white eyes.]]
* ''VideoGame/LifeIsStrange'' has this during the NightmareSequence. You are in the corridor of the girls' dorm, and entering the wrong door resets the scene. Entering the correct door advances you to the next stage, which can be noticed by something being different. In each stage, there is a hint which door to enter.

Our hero and his friends are wandering in an absurdly complicated place. Maybe it's TheMaze, or perhaps an exceedingly long hallway with two doors. Either way, they are shocked to find that whenever they enter one of two doors, they go all the way back to the beginning! Forced to TryEverything, they finally notice something strange about one path, usually one of the following:

** The [=DS=] version of ''VideoGame/SuperMario64'' has you follow music when rescuing Luigi.

[[quoteright:256:[[VideoGame/SeikenDensetsu3 https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/SD3LampflowerForest_1333.bmp]]]]

* In ''VideoGame/SeikenDensetsu3'':
** [[TheLostWoods the Lampflower Forest]] offers a rather non-subtle (but is missable) version. 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.
** In Carlie/Kevin's routes, the final dungeon is hidden beyond the [[TheMaze Jungle of Illusion]], and the maze must be navigated by listening to the sound that plays when you pick a path.

* '''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII''' has the Tomb of Unknown King as a variation of this trope. Rather than confusing the player on which door is right, the game instead confuses the player with point-of-view by seemingly reusing the same "zones". Basically you follow a map's layout but whenever you go to the next path or even backtrack, you are given a different perspective.

* ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry 4'' in the forest level, sort of. You have to make sure your shadow is behind you.

** The [=DS=] version of ''SuperMario64'' has you follow music when rescuing Luigi.

* ''VideoGame/SpookysJumpScareMansion'' has one of these as one of it's randomly generated rooms, with the correct path through it also randomly generated. The game clearly indicates the correct direction you have to go in with a ''*ding*'' sound (and an incorrect direction with a *da-''dum''* sound) and there is no penalty for choosing an incorrect direction aside from having to start over.

** In the ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOracleGames'', one such maze has several eyes embedded in the wall. You always use the door that none of the eyes is looking at.

** In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaSpiritTracks'', 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".]]

* ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'':

* ''VideoGame/NancyDrew:
** Last Train To Blue Moon Canyon'' has Nancy Drew 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.

!Examples:

* In ''VideoGame/{{Killer7}}'', at one point you navigate by the sound of a singer's voice. Thing is, you can't do so just by listening. Instead, you have to switch to Con Smith: He's blind, so via DisabilitySuperpower he can "see" the music as sound waves.

* 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 unbelievably awful SNES game ''Bebe's Kids'' pulls this on the player in the HauntedHouse 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.

* ''VideoGame/{{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.
* In ''Literature/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.

* ''[[{{Karoshi}} Karoshi 2.0]]'' has one of these. [[spoiler:Follow the trash cans.]]
* A rather subtle instance appears in ''VideoGame/SpaceQuestIIVohaulsRevenge'', 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'.
** 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 (an equally-deadly ''whirlpool''), you lose control of your character immediately, which throughout the game has been an indication that the plot is progressing forward (usually). It's basically FissionMailed: both rooms look like they will kill you after a long delay; one does, the other doesn't.

* ''{{Spectrobes}}: Origins'':

* 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.]]
* One of the puzzles in ''JollyRover'' has you [[MakesSenseInContext using an enchanted conch to listen for ghosts singing]] by using it on one of four caves.

* For another film example: ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheLastCrusade'': The Temple of the Sun has one of these in the form of the "Word of God" puzzle, a series of lettered tiles on the floor. Stepping on the wrong ones would cause them to break through, sending the hapless person into a chasm below the floor. The correct sequence is the spelling of God's name, Jehovah ([[spoiler:spelt in Latin where it begins with an I, as Indy nearly died finding out]]).
* The final level of TNT: Evilution, half of Final VideoGame/{{Doom}}, has a large field of platforms with large candles on them burning with different coloured flames. Stepping on the wrong platform is instant death, not too dissimilar in principle to the Film/IndianaJonesAndTheLastCrusade example. The correct sequence is given in the rows of coloured torches in the previous room.

''Can you tell which door is not like the other?''\\
''By the time I finish this article?''

** The original ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZelda'' game had two of these, the solutions to which needed to be purchased from nearby [=NPCs=].
** In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaLinksAwakening'', 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]].
** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime'' had TheLostWoods leading to the Sacred Grove and the pathless desert leading to the Spirit Temple.

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