If there's a body of water that needs to be crossed, some lily pads are useful in traversing it. Even if the lily pads in question aren't big enough for a human to sit on, they may be used as platforms by small animals— in particular, this is a Stock Animal Behavior for frogs.
A Sub-Trope of Artistic License – Botany, Theme Park Landscape and Improvised Platform. Closely related to Leaf Boat. See also Tree Vessel.
Examples:
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Anime
- Doraemon: Nobita and the Green Giant Legend: At one point under Planet Green's surface, the gang crosses an underwater stream via floating lily pads that can support their weight.
Films — Animated
- Cri-kee can be seen using one of these during the song "Reflection" from Mulan.
Literature
- The Magic Map: David sits on a giant water lily while enjoying lunch in the Amazon River’s domain.
Toys
- BIONICLE: Ga-Koro is made out of this.
Video Games
- Giant lily pads act as platforms in Adventures of Dino Riki. Some periodically sink into water.
- The third teaser trailer for Alice: Madness Returns has Alice waking up on a lily pad and seeing the wonderful garden. She then hops on top of them and approaches the Caterpillar. Afterwards, all hell breaks loose.
- Black Mesa features oversized lily pads in Xen which serve as temporary, slowly-sinking platforms.
- These let Anna Lee cross ponds in Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures In The Park, though there might also be swinging vines or trampolines to use.
- Congo Bongo: The fourth stage has these, along with hippos and fish.
- In Cool Spot, lily pads are present in the fourth level, "Wading Around". Some of these have frog enemies on them that Spot has to take out first.
- Crash Bandicoot (1996): The two river-based levels both contain lily pad platforms amongst the obstacles. They sink almost immediately, serving as temporary platforms.
- CrossCode: The oasis areas of Maroon Valley tend to have lily pads in the water that Lea can walk across to reach secret areas.
- Epic Battle Fantasy 4 only allows you to do this after finding the appropriate pair of boots (the others allow you to walk on lava and clouds). Of course you only obtain one pair of boots so a later cutscene shows only Anna doing this while the rest of the party struggles to cross the water the old fashioned way and discussing if half a boot will work the same.
- Played with in Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout. Season 5 of the game introduces lily pad-shaped drums, although the way they function is still in the spirit of this trope — being bouncy platforms that players can use to launch themselves up high. These are found in many of Season 5's levels, most notably Lily Leapers, which requires players to traverse an entire gauntlet of these.
- Frogun has lily pads in some of the levels that can be stood on. They act as Temporary Platform obstacles.
- A common sight in Golden Sun games.
- The second Goosebumps: Night of Scares game has the level in Dr. Brewer's laboratory, filled with Fantastic Flora, and a wide indoor stream taking up most of the middle part. You can only cross by stepping on lily pads, but time your jump properly — if you're on a pad as it sinks underwater, you find out the water is in fact infested with piranhas.
- Shows up in a few stages in Hoa. Of note that the lily-pads are regular-sized - your character is a thumb-sized fairy / pixie creature who can fit snugly on a leaf.
- Hypercharge Unboxed has a stage in an outdoor garden, with a large swimming pool with regular-sized lily-pads on it's surface. And your character is an anthropomorphic toy. Guess how you cross to the other side.
- Illusion of Gaia features a town that has areas that can only be accessed by standing on lily pads.
- In the The Jungle Book Licensed Game, lily pads are present in the fourth level, "The River". At the end of the level, Mowgli plays a mini-game where Baloo tosses fruit and he has to catch it. With each fruit Mowgli misses, the lily pads begin to sink further, though you don't have to play the mini-game, and can drop into the water at any time to end the stage and advance to the next level.
- Kid Baby Starchild has these in at least the first level. They come in varying sizes, and have upward-sticking triangles on the edges.
- Kirby's Epic Yarn: The Flower Fields level features some lilypads that can be used as platforms.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, Link can put on the Deku mask and walk on lily pads. His Deku form is evidently very lightweight, since he can't do this in normal mode or his other forms.
- The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap: There are lilypads that can be used to cross bodies of water in the overworld before getting the flippers when tiny. The ones that begin appearing in Castor Wilds after Link does certain Kinstone fusions are the only way to traverse the quicksand when Link is small, as he cannot use the Pegasus Boots when he's in that size. There are also Mouse World segments in many areas where Link has to stand on a lilypad and propel himself across the water with the Gust Jar.
- The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: The Ancient Cistern features numerous lilypads acting as platforms. Several are upside down and must be turned around with the whip.
- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: Giant lilypads, large enough to hold up Link while only slightly sinking into the water, are common sights in the waters of the Great Sky Island.
- Mazin Saga: Mutant Fighter have a stage set in a swamp where you need to cross a river using gigantic lily pads. While avoiding enemy robots and oversized insects on the surface.
- Miitopia : As you might expect from location named "Lotus Lake", the path Miis walk on in said lake is made of giant lilypads. There are even entire inns that can be found on these.
- Minecraft has lily pads spawn in the water of swamp biomes. They can be easily used as platforms — standing on a lily pad is no different from standing on on a regular solid block — and this can be exploited when making farms. Crops need to be close to standing water to grow, making it necessary to run water-filled channels though any farm you might set up, which can be a bother when you have to constantly jump into and climb out of them when crossing your farm. However, paving over said channels with lily pads allows you to irrigate your crops while acting like the water-filled depressions aren't even there.
- Ōkami: You can make your own by drawing on water with your celestial brush. While you can swim on lava, lily pads won't last on it. At one point in the game, you can take villagers for a ride on your lily pads.
- Pikmin 3: The Koppai crew and the Pikmin can ride giant lilypads in the Twilight River. Justified, since all of them are the size of small insects.
- Plants vs. Zombies: Lily Pads are used for levels that have the swimming pool. Useful to place other plants on.
- Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time: Lily Pad returns in the Big Wave Beach levels, and can be placed on any tile beyond the tide line. This protects your plants from being swept away by the tide, although a select few plants can hover above the water and hence do not require Lily Pad's assistance. Using Plant Food on a Lily Pad will create more Lily Pads adjacent to him.
- Pokémon:
- The Water/Grass-type Pokémon Lotad sports a lilypad on its head, with a radius slightly larger than its body. It tends to live in ponds and lakes, floating on the water surface. Many of its Pokédex entries state that it often serves as a ferry for smaller Pokémon that can't swim. This is seen in New Pokémon Snap, where you can use fruit to lure Pikachu into crossing a river on a lotad in the forest level.
- Pokémon Black 2 and White 2: You use giant lily pads to move between platforms in Marlon's water-type gym.
- Rayman 2: The Great Escape features giant lily pads in several levels.
- Rune Factory 3 gives you a magic seed you can use to instantly create a hovering lily pad that you can ride. This is one of two ways you can cross water in the game.
- Skully have lily platforms in the swamp and pool levels, which can support your titular character's default skull form and the smaller golem forms. Miss a jump however and S Uper Drowning Skills kicks in.
- Sonic the Hedgehog:
- Tails and the Music Maker: One of the mini-games involves Tails and an army of frogs hopping across lily pads as music plays, and when the music stops, whoever is on the orange lily pad loses.
- Sonic Adventure: Chaos 4 is fought in a lake of water. Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles need to stand on lily pads to wait out the boss.
- Sonic Shuffle: The "Over the Rainbow" mini-game involves Sonic and his friends hopping across lily pads by pressing the right button before time runs out.
- Star Trek: Generations: The video game adaptation features this on a mission on planet Bersus V; the player even has to grow new pads to cross a large chunk of a lake. The mission is played as Data, an android who canonically weighs just a little more than the average human his height, but even so, the pads appear to be particularly sturdy.
- Super Mario Bros.:
- Super Mario Sunshine has the infamous lily pad ride as one of its secret stages. Mario has to navigate an acidic stream using a series of lily pads that slowly disintegrate.
- The lily pads actually return in both Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2, which even features a Sunshine themed level in the latter.
- Mario Party 8: The minigame Rudder Madness has all characters ride water lilies across a muddy river in a swamp. They have to avoid obstacles like rocks and the trunks holding up a decayed bridge. Interestingly, the "rudders" used to steer the lilies happen to be the latter's tails. Whoever reaches the goal first wins; however, if all four players reach the goal at the same time or neither of them manages to do so after five minutes, the minigame ends in a tie.
- At one point in the Great Boggly Tree from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Mario has to lead the Punies across a small body of water by walking on black-and-white lilypads.
- A variation appears in Paper Mario: Sticker Star in Loop Loop River, where Mario rides giant fallen leaves on a circular poisonous river.
- Plum Park, from Paper Mario: Color Splash, features such lilypads.
- La Statuette Maudite de l'Oncle Ernest has a mini-game where a frog must jump on lily pads to eat flies.
- Webkinz: In the two Lily Padz games in the arcade, the player controls a frog who must hop on lily pads to make it back to his home. If you stay on a lily pad too long, it will sink, and you lose a life if you fall in the water.
- The Wolf and the Waves: In the tutorial, a zombie (and later a bunny) reaches the players raft by way of a lilypad.
- In the Yoshi's Crafted World level "Ride the River", Yoshi travels on a river riding of lilypads (made out of sponge, to fit the crafting theme of the game).
Web Comics
- Homestuck:
- Jade plays guitar and somehow summons giant lily pads. It sort of makes sense, given that the lily pads lead to a frog temple.
- Waaaaaaaay later, one of the Openbound flash games has a segment taking place on more giant lily pads, apparently taken out of someone's memory.
Western Animation
- Cyberchase uses a variant: In an episode about arithmetic and geometric progressions, the kids must get across a wide river using a single large lily pad about four feet across. When they put the pad in the water, it starts magically reproducing, generating a new full-size pad every couple of seconds, and the new pads do the same thing. So the total number of lily pads doubles every couple of seconds. It isn't long before they have a bridge of lily pads stretching all the way across the river.
Real Life
- The Victoria is a genus of water-lilies with very large leaves. The leaves of the Victoria amazonica can reach up to 3 meters [9.8 feet] in diameter and can support the weight of a full grown adult
◊ (so long as the weight is distributed properly).
