History Main / OnlyIdiotsMayPass

* ''VideoGame/FatalFrame'' takes it to a whole new level. At one point in the second game you need to find a key to free your sister from a cell she's locked in. The game explicitly tells you which house to look in but doesn't allow you to find the key without talking to Itsuki first and letting him tell you where exactly the key is. The worst part? If you're replaying the game, you are still supposed to talk to him in order for the key to appear.

Contrast OnlySmartPeopleMayPass, OnlyTheWorthyMayPass. See also YouShouldntKnowThisAlready.

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}: The Video Game'', you are asked to obtain an hammer at the beginning of the game, the only hammer around is under a dangerously lethal amount of crates and heavy objects. Of course taking the hammer would mean being crushed. So players would often find a way to get the hammer without grabbing it. After running around one would decide to take the hammer, the boxes fall and Fry is dead, along a game over. This, however, was just a way of introducing the lives/game over mechanic, as Fry is brought back to life by the Professor with his new invention.

** In ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime3Corruption'', there is an energy generator which you need to call your ship in to destroy - which is guarded by two glaringly obvious anti-air cannons. The forward path will not open until you foolishly call your ship in for a bombing run, getting it damaged and having your advisor inform you that you first need to disable the cannons. The doors which quite obviously lead to the two cannons you have just been told to destroy are locked. Nothing the player does will unlock them, and they can't be opened until the player gives up and tries to leave; at that point, the doors open up so that enemies can come through and attack you.

** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaFourSwordsAdventures'': An otherwise-mild version with [[UnexpectedlyRealisticGameplay a multiplayer twist]] appears in the Village of the Blue Maiden, in which the player must talk to an NPC who bemoans that no-one can sense DarkWorld gates, discover a dark world gate on the next screen, and return to the NPC who then gives you the [[CoolKey moon pearl]]. The problem is that in multiplayer, ''[[GuideDangIt one particular Link]]'' must talk to the NPC, sense the gate, and return for the pearl.

** In the second-to-last mission, a similar situation happens. This time the triggers are Allied Radar Stations which you are explicitely told to destroy. Alright, so you destroy them. Then sending an Engineer into the Chronosphere gets you "Mission Accomplished" with a cutscene of you using it successfully, only to get ''another'' cutscene pre-mission briefing for the last mission where you see it self-destruct anyway for plot reasons. Oddly, should you destroy the Chronosphere instead of capturing it after getting rid of the Radar Stations, you still get a "Mission Accomplished" even though now the next video is already the self-destruction one.

* In ''Webcomic/{{Adventurers}}'', upon finding the fourth energy crystal, Karn [[https://web.archive.org/web/20150906195105/http://adventurers.keenspot.com/d/0264.html explains]] that they can't take it unless they first go back to town and talk to a NPC, even though this makes no logical sense.

** After successfully completing a sidequest involving the Runaway Five, you are informed that a department store has opened in Fourside. To advance the plot, you must enter and leave the establishment, at which point [[spoiler:your female party member is kidnapped. To get the plot to advance any further from there, you have to kill the monster responsible, even though he does not have her anymore and there is no reward for defeating him.]] At that point, you will be able to visit a café that you may have visited earlier. But now, talking to people inside triggers a sequence where [[spoiler:a friend of yours winds up half-dead in a nearby alley.]] ''Then'' you can go back inside and look at a seemingly blank wall you couldn't reach before to... you know what? Let's just call ''[=EarthBound=]'' an EventFlag [[IdiotPlot Plot]] and be done with it.

** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaFourSwordsAdventures'': An otherwise-sane version appears in the Village of the Blue Maiden, in which the player must talk to an NPC who bemoans that no-one can sense DarkWorld gates, discover a dark world gate on the next screen, and return to the NPC who then gives you the [[CoolKey moon pearl]]. The problem is that in multiplayer, ''one particular Link'' must talk to the NPC, sense the gate, and return for the pearl.

** In ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime3Corruption'', there was an energy generator which you needed to call your ship in to destroy - which was guarded by two glaringly obvious anti-air cannons. The forward path would not open until you foolishly called your ship in for a bombing run, getting it damaged and having your advisor inform you that you first need to disable the cannons.
*** That same sequence provides a second example, in that the doors which quite obviously lead to the two cannons you have just been told to destroy are locked. Nothing the player does will unlock them, and they can't be opened until the player gives up and tries to leave; at that point, the doors open up so that enemies can come through and attack you.

** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheMinishCap'': You can't get the Pegasus Boots until you try and fail to wade through the much of Castor Wilds. Also, the Hyrule Town library doesn't open until a [[{{Lilliputians}} Minish]] tells you about the Minish elder who lives there.

-> ''"You'd think we could just leave this guy frozen solid, chisel off the mask, and call it a victory for the forces of good. But Link likes to do things the hard way, so get Arrows and Magic Pots from the pots if necessary, then let loose a Fire Arrow."''
-->-- Versus Books' ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaMajorasMask'' StrategyGuide

[[folder:Role Playing]]

* ''VideoGame/EarthBound'' uses and abuses so many {{event flag}}s that it's hard to tell if it is lampshading the practice or if it is one of the most notable victims.

-->-- '''Casey Loe''', Versus Books' ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaMajorasMask'' StrategyGuide

* ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty: VideoGame/ModernWarfare 2'' has one in its third mission. [[spoiler:You have to follow the Russian agent Makarov through a crowded airport, killing civilians, before he shoots you at the end of it and leaves your American corpse for the Russians to find, sparking World War Three. If you try to shoot Makarov before he can kill you, however, you will immediately die from violating "friendly fire." Justified as [[AnthropicPrinciple the rest of the game revolves around the player character taking part in the massacre there.]]]]
** Even worse, however, is in the end of that level. [[spoiler:You'll see an in-game cutscene, where you can still move about. And, of course, the objective point(a van) is where the cutscene is. So the game assumes that you'll be standing at the back of the van when it's over. ''And then Makarov shoots you.'' But of course, you can move during this. so once you trigger it, you can start running. And get to pretty early in the level. But, since the game thinks you're hanging out by Makarov, it doesn't actually check that you are there. So you can be 200 meters away from him, through a ton of concrete, and he'll still shoot you. ''with a pistol.'']]
* When you find the pirate ship docked at Windfall Island in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker'', the first logical step would appear to be to board the ship and see what's up. Entering the ship requires you to give the password, a horribly punny answer to a pirate riddle. It's possible (and, in some cases, quite easy) to guess the password, but you'll still be turned away unless you've visited the secret entrance to an unremarkable building in the city and overheard the password yourself. The game {{Hand Wave}}s this by implying that you need to say it "exactly right" (inflections and all, apparently), but would it really have been that difficult to just have a generic "Say the password!" statement in place of a riddle that any intelligent player would try to solve?
** Not ''quite'' as bad as it sounds, since Tetra is supposed to notice you sneaking around (and thus deliberately set up Link's "theft" of the much-needed bombs).
** Once you first reach Kakariko Village in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess'', the leader of the village tells you that the path up Death Mountain is guarded by Gorons and tells you to stay away until the situation is resolved. ''Zelda'' games in recent years have used the (possibly warped) Aesop "it's better to be courageous than to listen to the sound advice of others" more frequently, but this is a particularly noticeable example. After all, the only way to advance the plot is to head up Death Mountain anyway, get stopped by the Gorons, get knocked off the mountain, and ''give up on trying to climb it.'' It also doesn't help that the next step to bypassing this obstacle is for your horse to show up in town [[ContrivedCoincidence completely by chance]] after your failure.

* In the original ''VideoGame/MetalGear'' port on the NES, you can't blow up the supercomputer until you're told by the professor that you have to use plastic explosives, despite the map that came with the game clearly showing that you needed to use... plastic explosives. Rescuing the professor requires going through a maze forest that you are given no hints on the proper sequence, you just have to keep guessing. There's a trick around having to do this though -- if you immediately go right in the computer room you'll glitch into the big boss room.

** Myst didn't learn from ''Alpine Encounter''. You could short-circuit the entire plot by [[spoiler:waiting at a location, getting the backpack, and calling the inspector]].

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* Taken to extremes in ''[[VideoGame/DarkSeed Dark Seed II]]'': every time you try to open the protagonist's closet, he'll inform you it's locked. Until later on you get a flashback ''very'' late in the game via a fortune teller session to his childhood where his mother decided to placate her son's fears of the "monsters" in said closet by ''pretending'' to lock it. When you open the closet, it has a ''portal'' to the place where one of the three PlotCoupons is held. And yet you HAVE to go through this sequence of events just because the protagonist doesn't even try THE DOORKNOB. To add insult to injury, if he mentions this to his mother, she will ''mock him'' for having assumed the door was locked all these years.

** In ''VideoGame/MetroidFusion'', after you obtain Power Bombs, you're supposed to go through the Reactor Silo, but your path through the first screen may be blocked by an immobile cocoon that cannot be damaged by any weapon you have. However, the cocoon will be destroyed and pose no obstacle if you first go back to your ship and listen to MissionControl. The game presents a save prompt at the ship ''just'' before this EventFlag is set, which has unnecessarily confused many a player who has had to reload from this point (most likely after [[ThatOneBoss getting killed by Yakuza]]).

* ''Vivisector: Beast Inside'' has a very straightforward example of this: to progress, you have to activate a series of checkpoints. Your radar can only pick up on the next checkpoint by activating the previous one. Almost every checkpoint in the first half of the game is situated in a clearing usually lined with hidden fences or other barriers, obviously setting you up for a trap. Therefore, you ''have to trigger the trap'' to progress.

** At one point in ''VideoGame/KingsQuestVII'', you need to place sulfur into a hearth to knock out the blacksmith and access his tools. However, even with sulfur in hand, the game won't let you do it until you overhear a couple of characters in another room gossip about how it can be used for this purpose.

* VisualNovel/{{Snatcher}} does this far too often, but by far the worst instance is a painfully obvious hidden passage in the [[AbandonedHospital hospital]] that you cannot "discover" until the plot allows you to.

** In ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime 3: Corruption'', there was an energy generator which you needed to call your ship in to destroy - which was guarded by two glaringly obvious anti-air cannons. The forward path would not open until you foolishly called your ship in for a bombing run, getting it damaged and having your advisor inform you that you first need to disable the cannons.

[[folder: Action ]]

[[folder: Adventure ]]

* Despite the fact that everybody knows that the password is "Ken sent me" in ''VideoGame/LeisureSuitLarry'', the player has to jump through all kinds of hoops to read it on the toilet wall. Only after that can it actually be used. That is, in the VGA remake; in the original, you can just type in the sentence whenever you feel like it.

[[folder: Role Playing ]]

[[folder: Real Time Strategy ]]

[[folder: Web Comics ]]

[[AC:[[ActionGame Action]]]]

[[AC:[[AdventureGame Adventure]]]]

[[AC:[[RolePlayingGame Role Playing]]]]

** After successfully completing a sidequest involving the Runaway Five, you are informed that a department store has opened in Fourside. To advance the plot, you must enter and leave the establishment, at which point [[spoiler:your female party member is kidnapped. To get the plot to advance any further from there, you have to kill the monster responsible, even though he does not have her anymore and there is no reward for defeating him.]] At that point, you will be able to visit a café that you may have visited earlier. But now, talking to people inside triggers a sequence where [[spoiler:a friend of yours winds up half-dead in a nearby alley.]] ''Then'' you can go back inside and look at a seemingly blank wall you couldn't reach before to... you know what? Let's just call ''[=EarthBound=]'' an EventFlag [[IdiotPlot Plot]] and be done with it.

[[AC:[[RealTimeStrategy Real Time Strategy]]]]

[[AC:WebComics]]

A specific form of the BrokenBridge. Could be a form of YouCantThwartStageOne. See also StupidityIsTheOnlyOption.

* Played straight and averted in ''VisualNovel/NineHoursNinePersonsNineDoors''. In the first puzzle there are 2 briefcases that need a key and a code to open. The room you're in has 2 notes as a hint for the code. However if you know the code already you can just input the code after inserting the key and open it. Keep in mind the room you're in is being filled with water(though only in plot). Later in the kitchen, the key you need is in a cabinet door that needs a passcode, the game will not let you enter the passcode and one of the characters you are in the room with will say along the lines "Don't mess around with that if you don't even have a hint", however to get the hint you have to get yourself trapped in the freezer and almost freeze to death.

* Late in ''VideoGame/NeverwinterNights2'', there are five statues in Arvahn that you must visit to complete the Ritual of Purification. One of them is actually located in the Swamp Ruins, the second area you get to visit in the beginning of the game (only in the early game, the door leading to it is blocked). However, by Act II, the ruins disappear from your global map, and going to the intact [[DoomedHometown West Harbor]] won't bring you there. Instead, you have to enter Arvahn, at which point West Harbor is instantly destroyed in your absence, visit the other four statues, and then enter a portal to the ruins of West Harbor. And if you decide to do this quest before recruiting Orlen for Crossroad Keep... well, bad luck, he's LostForever.

* A glitch in ''VideoGame/DragonAgeII'' resembles this trope. In the questline to recruit Isabela, at one point you're ambushed and you need to kill all the enemies. You need to wait for combat to end for a few seconds for Isabela to tell you that it was trap and that you should search the leader's body, but by this point, looting enemies immediately is probably second nature. If you loot the body before she tells you to, this can cause the game to not register the fact that you already looted the item you need, preventing you from entering the Chantry to continue with her quest. At this point, you're either forced to reload your game (which is particularly bad if you haven't saved it in a while), or continue without Isabela, making her LostForever. So in this case, you have to wait for her to bring it up before looting, or else you get this trope, albeit unintentional from the developers.

* [[http://www.adventurers-comic.com/d/0264.html Parodied]] (inevitably) in ''Webcomic/{{Adventurers}}''

* ''VideoGame/EscapeFromStMarys'': A game-in-a-game requires a specific sequence to win. The sequence is the same with each playthrough, but it fails to work until your character has finished some irrelevant stuff elsewhere.