Basic Trope: A pilot demonstrates their Improbable Piloting Skills by flying through extremely tight spaces.
- Straight: When the Wikistani One Man Squadron Reaper 1 has taken down all of the enemy aces of Omega Squadron, who are guarding the Weapon of Mass Destruction Thumphammer, which is secured in a Weaponized Landmark in the Tropeland Capital of Tropein, said Weaponized Landmark being the Statue of Edward the Fast. The entrance to the statue of Edward the Fast is a tight crawlspace, which makes even the slightest of wrong moves result in certain death. On top of that, Omega 1 was revealed to be Not Quite Dead in spite of him being labeled KIA a few missions ago and is perfectly willing to engage in an Old-School Dogfight with you in his personal Ace Custom while still navigating the Weaponized Landmark's tunnels.
- Exaggerated:
- The Thumphammer is located in a Planet Spaceship dedicated to Edward the Fast that's millions of miles above the surface of the earth, and Reaper 1 has to navigate an entire labyrinth of weird, winding, and terrifyingly tight tunnels with multiple dead ends, and not to mention, he has to do this while dogfighting with Omega Squadron within said labyrinth. And there are HUNDREDS of Omega Squadron pilots, each of them bearing their own personal Ace Custom.
- Not only that, but once Reaper 1 starts even trying to fly towards the Planet Spaceship, said Planet Spaceship gets sucked away into an Unrealistic Black Hole, and there are hundreds of Asteroid Thickets to maneuver around. On top of all of that, it's a Timed Mission!
- And once Reaper 1 destroys the Thumphammer, he has to escape the Collapsing Lair with only a few minutes to get the hell out of the blast zone (yes, BLAST ZONE, not the Planet Spaceship itself), which is a good few miles away.
- The Thumphammer is located in a Planet Spaceship dedicated to Edward the Fast that's millions of miles above the surface of the earth, and Reaper 1 has to navigate an entire labyrinth of weird, winding, and terrifyingly tight tunnels with multiple dead ends, and not to mention, he has to do this while dogfighting with Omega Squadron within said labyrinth. And there are HUNDREDS of Omega Squadron pilots, each of them bearing their own personal Ace Custom.
- Downplayed:
- Reaper 1 just has to go through a quick canyon run to take out General Ripper within his canyon based bunker.
- Reaper 1 has some wingmen from Alpha Squadron backing him up in a fairly wide yet still claustrophobic tunnel run towards General Ripper's bunker.
- Justified:
- As the local genetically modified and completely bloodless (meaning he can withstand pulling multiple consecutive plane tricks without even feeling dizzy once) Ace Pilot with some serious Improbable Piloting Skills that absolutely nobody else is capable of matching, and that Thumphammer is most likely going to bring about The End of the World as We Know It within hours, Reaper 1 is the guy for the job. This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself, as nobody else would be crazy, skilled, or tough enough to withstand having to fly into a crawlspace and dogfight a bunch of enemy aces within there.
- As per invoked, a rogue Wikistani designer has secretly added a tunnel that's big enough for a plane to fly into but small enough to go unnoticed by their superiors. Cue the above mission briefing.
- Inverted:
- Reaper 1 has to defend the Thumphammer that Wikistan had just acquired, and he has to defend against it from Omega Squadron within a tiny crawlspace.
- Reaper 1 has to defend his Airborne Aircraft Carrier in a wide open airspace against Omega Squadron.
- Subverted:
- Reaper 1 is informed that Alpha Squadron will be taking care of the situation...
- Reaper 1 simply fires an Air to Surface missile towards Thumphammer...
- Double Subverted:
- ...But then Alpha Squadron is taken down and Reaper 1 is the only one capable of taking down Thumphammer.
- ...And the Air to Surface missile is promptly trashed. The only Air to Surface missile. That means Reaper 1's gotta fly in there and take Thumphammer down personally.
- Parodied: Like in Exaggeration, but the tunnel that does lead to Thumphammer is increasingly tinier and tinier, and Reaper 1 would be forced to speed up more and more to the point where he'd be Too Fast to Stop and essentially crash into Thumphammer. But of course, his Improbable Piloting Skills as well as the Theme Song Power Up of Orchestral Bombing would help him get in, blow Thumphammer up, and fly out of the Planet Spaceship's blast zone within seconds.
- Zig-Zagged:
- The area in which Thumphammer resides in tends to have... Alien Geometries, so to speak. It tends to narrow down and widen up a lot.
- Omega 1 himself is carrying the Thumphammer, and he tends to fly through all kinds of environments; Narrow crawlspaces, wide open airspaces, canyons, and more.
- Averted:
- Thumphammer is in a wide open space.
- Thumphammer is swiftly taken care of by a bomb-carrying UAV (essentially a much more complex and personally guided Air to Surface missile).
- Enforced: Rule of Cool, Rule of Drama, Rule of Fun. Also, it makes for a pretty challenging Final Boss to have to navigate through tight, winding tunnels in order to destroy any specific target.
- Lampshaded: "How the heck are we gonna fit in that tiny crawlspace!?"
- Invoked: A rogue Wikistani designer of Thumphammer made it so that there's a tiny flight hole that's big enough for at most an A-10 Thunderbolt to fit through but just small enough to be unnoticed. Bonus points if it's in the very barrel of Thumphammer.
- Exploited:
- Due to having such a tiny crawlspace, Reaper 1 could easily shake off any Omega Aces off him.
- Omega 1 hangs around Thumphammer itself, which means a shot down the tunnel would pretty much guarantee Reaper 1 either being forced to take the hit or forced to dodge out of the way into a wall at over a thousand or two knots.
- Defied:
- The Tropelandic overseer of Thumphammer ensures that there are no tunnels (and the overseer is very thorough about this) being designed so that any plane could swoop in and destroy it. Anyone who tries to invoke this can expect to be executed with extreme prejudice as a result.
- "Reaper 1, Alpha 1 "Samson" here with Alpha Squadron. This mission would have been a risky one, so allow us to help you out." Cue Alpha Squadron essentially widening the tunnel with a Macross Missile Massacre, and promptly swooping in to take care of Omega Squadron to help you get to Thumphammer as fast and easily as possible.
- Discussed:
- "You have to enter Thumphammer by flying into this tiny crawlspace. It's a tough flight, but I'm sure you can pull it off."
- "Remember When You Blew Up Thumphammer, and you had to navigate into a tiny crawlspace to do it? Fun times."
- Conversed: "Having to enter Thumphammer is tough! Especially when you're actually in the crawlspace, and any wrong move is certain death, meaning you have to restart THE WHOLE LEVEL all over again!"
- Implied: Reaper 1 is an accomplished Ace Pilot and Retired Badass, though his later aircraft shows damage that could only be done through the environment. Considering that Reaper 1 is stated to have never been shot down or even hit by an enemy projectile in the entirety of his career, it implies he's had to have gone through this because while there's no way he'd be stupid enough to scratch his wings against a mountain, but there's definitely some plausibility of those wings getting scratched while in a tiny crawlspace.
- Played for Drama:
- Reaper 1 has to enter the Statue of Edward the Fast to destroy Thumphammer... And in the process, he has to fly through the densely populated city of Tropein in order to do so, which means that there are definitely going to be mass civilian casualties by the millions on Reaper 1's way to Thumphammer.
- Reaper 1 is the Closest Thing We Got to ending the war, and losing Reaper 1 to the destruction of Thumphammer might as well be considered a "barely won the war but lost pretty much everything" at the very best, if not an outright mutual draw. Alpha Squadron and Omega Squadron have been tearing each other apart and the feud ended with a Mutual Kill between the last pilots of the Squadron (and those last pilots were both rookie officers who have barely just got out of completing training!), so to say the stakes are high on both Reaper 1 destroying Thumphammer before it activates and the people trying to activate Thumphammer as quickly as possible to destroy Wikistan would be a complete and utter understatement.
- Played for Laughs:
- Reaper 1 has to go through the exaggerated variant... With the task being to deliver a pizza to the local Planet Spaceship. The 30 minute rule applies, and after Omega Squadron had made that order, the Wikistani Pizzeria in charge of making said pizza had added it into a cargo plane that Reaper 1 will be piloting. Miraculously, all of this happens within the span of 29 minutes and 30 seconds and it's only now that Reaper 1 has arrived, so to say that time's running out would be an understatement.
- Reaper 1 finds destroying Thumphammer as the biggest challenge of all; The SS Tropenought? Light work, just fly in and let out a few salvo of missiles against the engine once you make it inside, even though many other Ace Pilots consider the SS Tropenought to be pretty much the inversion of Point Defenseless, but to him, the SS Tropenought might as well have an exaggeration of it. The SS Tropernus? Easy Egypt, the SS Tropernus could never catch someone like Reaper 1! In fact, after every mission involving this, he sighs a little, as if he wants to say that it was "too boring" or, "not as exciting as Thumphammer".
- Played for Horror: Whenever Reaper 1 shoots an Omega Ace down in the tunnels, there's a pretty good chance that their plane might ricochet into Reaper 1's, most certainly causing a fiery death. Yeah, no pressure.
- Deconstructed: The fact that they need a Super-Soldier Ace Pilot to do the deed shows just how deep in dire straits Wikistan is in. EVERY POSSIBLE STAKE is put on Reaper 1's shoulders, which pretty much turns him into a Nervous Wreck.
- Reconstructed: But before he can go out there and possibly screw up the mission due to making a mistake out of fright, Reaper 1 is soothed and given a massive confidence boost by being informed of the fact that if he takes out Thumphammer, then whatever dire straits the country is in is swiftly going to vanish and the war would be over with Wikistan being the definitive, unanimous winner. And with this confidence boost, Reaper 1 swoops in and does the job perfectly.
Make an Airstrike Impossible within the main page, but make it back in one piece.
