History Main / TryEverything

* ''VideoGame/DareToDream'':

* In any game which has a numeric keypad (or similar combination lock) as an obstacle, brute-forcing it is usually a viable option unless the designers thought ahead and made the passcode prohibitively long or actually required the code to be found in the story first. This is especially true if the solution is split into parts; you only need enough parts to narrow it down to a reasonable cross section of answers.
** Played for laughs in ''VideoGame/{{Portal 2}}'' when Chell and Wheatley accidentally reawaken [=GLaDOS=]. Wheatley tries to cancel the process, but when he finds out it requires a 6-character alphanumeric password, his solution is to just brute force it, all while a very angry [=GLaDOS=] is reassembling herself in the background. [[TheDitz Despite being an AI, he gets as far as "AAAAAC", only to realize that he skipped "AAAAAB".]]
** PlayedForLaughs in ''VideoGame/TheStanleyParable'' with the keypad in the office. You learn the code when The Narrator remarks "There's no way Stanley could know the code was 2-8-4-5", and he remarks it was amazing Stanley was able to figure it out just by trying everything. Even better is when you come back on a second playthrough and remember the code from ''before'' The Narrator tells you: he gets notably upset that you didn't even let him finish talking and forces you to listen to some new-age music for a moment to "calm down your anxiety".
* In many, many {{Roguelikes}}, drinking your unidentified potions or eating the stuff you picked off that mysterious herb bush is not an option for the sane. When you're [[GodzillaThreshold down to single-digit HP and attacked by an entire pack of jackals]], it may be your ''only'' option: "What's this one? No... What's this one? Maybe this one?" ''*is devoured whilst blind, sick and invisible*''
** When things get really bad, there's also the unidentified scrolls game, which has a wider, riskier range of consequences. Resurrection? Destroy Armour? Summon Greater Demon? Teleport? or Dig?
** How about wands? "I wonder what this does?" *Killer Elephant [[ForcedTransformation is turned into a newt]]* "How about this one?" *The [[OneHitKill Death Ray]] hits the monster! The Death Ray bounces! The Death Ray hits you! ...[[HaveANiceDeath Do you want your possessions identified?]]*

* Also PlayedForLaughs in ''VideoGame/TheStanleyParable'' with the keypad in the office. You learn the code when The Narrator remarks "There's no way Stanley could know the code was 2-8-4-5", and he remarks it was amazing Stanley was able to figure it out just by trying everything. Even better is when you come back on a second playthrough and remember the code from ''before'' The Narrator tells you: he gets notably upset that you didn't even let him finish talking and forces you to listen to some new-age music for a moment to "calm down your anxiety".

*** How about wands? "I wonder what this does?" *Killer Elephant [[ForcedTransformation is turned into a newt]]* "How about this one?" *The [[OneHitKill Death Ray]] hits the monster! The Death Ray bounces! The Death Ray hits you! ...[[HaveANiceDeath Do you want your possessions identified?]]*

* ''[[VideoGame/{{Metroid1}} Metroid]]'': In this game you can only progress by destroying walls, floors or ceilings. However, only certain pieces are destructible, but there is no way you can distinguish these pieces. You either have to know, or are simply required to try to destroy every piece of floor, wall or ceiling in the game in order to progress...

** If you're GenreSavvy, you never even bother with your attorney's badge, just to save time. [[spoiler:Which will screw you over in 1-4, since it's the ''only'' item that gets the old guy to respond. In the following case, if you show your badge to Gumshoe, he will ''still'' say you're "always flashing it around", despite you never having shown it to him before.]]
*** A similar event happens in 2-2, where showing your attorney's badge to not-Director Hotti is the only way to convince him to share information with you regarding [[spoiler:Ini Miney's accident]].

** One method is [[BoltOfDivineRetribution lightning bolts]]. It even warns you about this in the manual. It even shows you a picture of exactly what will happen to you. These usually are used when the developers don't want you to just whip everything in the room to try solving a puzzle. Sometimes this behavior makes sense, because Lemeza is nominally an archaeologist; sometimes it just seems cruel.
*** The lightning bolts are particularly evil because the game has optional collectibles, some of which can only be found by randomly whipping every wall looking for secret areas. Then again, they are mostly optional.

* Quite common in InteractiveFiction (and other AdventureGames as well), where players tend to pick up ''everything'' and, when confronted with a puzzle, immediately try to apply everything to it.
** A variant is the "[[YouCantGetYeFlask guess the verb/noun/adjective or pronoun]] on rare occasions" puzzles, where the player has no choice but to resort to trying every variation on "use the thing on the other thing" until they find the right combination of verbs and nouns. For example, in one real-life example, "use whip on lion" gives a failure message ("You're too afraid of the lion!") while "whip lion" works perfectly.

* ''VideoGame/GrimFandango'' normally gives the player enough hints to avoid this trope (provided you examine everything and {{talk to everyone}}), and the lack of a way to combine items simplifies things even further. Year 2, however, has one puzzle which requires you to figure out the purpose of a slip of paper with the words "Rusty Anchor" on it. There's exactly one direct clue as to who might be of help there, and if you missed it (or haven't been to that place yet), the only solution is to show the paper to every character in the town -- which can result in interesting answers, up to and including beat poetry and a piano ballad. It becomes very obvious that the game ''actually expects this behavior'', when, upon finding the right person to ask, the first thing you hear is "You mean, besides the song, and the poem, and the bar, and the statue by that name?".

** In the early games, the item-finder wouldn't pinpoint where hidden items where, only saying they were nearby or maybe giving a general direction, leading to players checking every tile to find the hidden loot.
*** The item-finder often wouldn't indicate items hidden in trash cans, causing players to check every trash can in the game just in case.

* ''Film/MrBeansHoliday'': After Mr. Bean's antics cause a father to miss his son's train, and the next train skipped the stop his son was at, the father put the phone number of his hotel room in Cannes up to the window. Unfortunately, the last two numbers were blocked by his fingers. Mr. Bean's solution is to write down every double-digit number from 00 to 99 and call each completed phone number. Subverted, as father and son are reunited before the call was made (none were seen onscreen after 06).

** Averted for most locations in most 2D ''Metroid'' titles because the Power Bomb will clear the screen and reveal any destructable blocks.

-->-- '''Franchise/SherlockHolmes''', ''The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet''

* One issue of ''Justice League Adventures'' had ComicBook/TheFlash attempting to disarm a bomb wired to a keypad that required a three-letter password. Being ''[[SuperSpeed The Flash]]'', he simply tries EVERY three-letter combination at lightning speed, starting from A-A-A, A-A-B, etc. [[spoiler:The disarm code turns out to be O-F-F.]]

[[folder:Web Video]]

* [[VideoGame/{{Phantasmagoria 2}} PHANTASMAGORIA!]] [[WebVideo/TheSpoonyExperiment The game where sometimes clicking on rats makes things happen and sometimes they don't happen!]] There's no real way to progress other than to just do absolutely everything you can.

%% Image kept on page per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1548646073002741500

[[folder:Web Comics]]

---> '''Tycho:''' Man, I really thought you had something going with that Garbage Mail Clock.

*** How about wands? "I wonder what this does?" *Killer Elephant [[BalefulPolymorph is turned into a newt]]* "How about this one?" *The [[OneHitKill Death Ray]] hits the monster! The Death Ray bounces! The Death Ray hits you! ...[[HaveANiceDeath Do you want your possessions identified?]]*