VideoGame.Poptropica: Sometimes, you'll have to "learn" something that you probably already know in order to progress. This is especially annoying on repeat island playthroughs, which the game encourages due to counting how many times you've completed each island.
VideoGame.Tsioque: A minor example—Tsioque will refuse to touch the alchemy set until she's found the recipe she needs, even if she already has all the ingredients.
VideoGame.Diablo II: There's a quest where you must touch five cairn stones in a certain order. The correct order is given on a particular scroll. You don't need to read the scroll; brute-force guessing works fine, as long as you have the scroll. Without it, the cairns do nothing no matter how much you click them.
VideoGame.Kings Quest V Absence Makes The Heart Go Yonder: You'd think that getting caught in Mordack's castle and taken to prison would be something you'd want to avoid... You'd be gravely mistaken! Earlier, Graham had to get locked up by an uncouth innkeeper, too.
VideoGame.Blade Runner 1997: You still have to go through most of the same conversations, no matter how many times you've played the game.
VideoGame.The Legend Of Zelda The Minish Cap: Link can't get the Pegasus Boots until trying and failing to wade through the muck of Castor Wilds. Also, the Hyrule Town library doesn't open until a Minish tells Link about the Minish elder who lives there.
VideoGame.Dark Seed II: The locked closet in Mike's bedroom contains another portal to the Dark World. And isn't locked at all. Years ago, his mother tricked him into thinking it was. Still, you can never open it until the deception is revealed.
ScrappyMechanic.First Person Shooter: When the Gold Rush update came out and included new weapons for the Medic, there was an outcry because A) getting all the weapons required getting all of the related achievements, B) many of those achievements were very counter-productive to your team's effort or even how the Medic was designed to be played, and C) several of them required either a co-operative ally or enemy to perform. The result was that players were deliberately ignoring team goals to focus on individual ones, causing much gnashing of teeth. People quickly formed servers to set up the contrived scenarios required to get the achievements quickly, which were vulnerable to griefers and attracted hate for players not earning the guns "legitimately."
VideoGame.Metroid Prime 3 Corruption: 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.Lagoon: Averted with one of the three tablets to open Philips Castle, but played straight the rest of the game.
VideoGame.Rayman 3 Hoodlum Havoc: Defeating an enemy with a $ symbol over its head causes a reusable power-up to appear somewhere in the general area. Sometimes, however, it is instead a smaller version of one of Rayman's shoes obscured by the power-up's typical glow; unless you'd already gone through the whole thing before, chances are you'd just take it for granted that it's a power-up and run into it. This ends up in a rather interesting, off-to-the-side surprise gameplay sequence, which upon completing will provide you with a real power-up. Thing is, if you are paranoid or clever enough to spot the difference without double-checking, you'll still have to fall for it in order to get the real power-up item, which is typically required in order to move on. People not used to driving controls (and using such controls to target and collide with small, agile targets) will find themselves... frustrated, to say the least.
YMMV.Cobalt: Scrappy Mechanic: It is possible to punch rockets and other explosives back at the person who fired or threw them. Good luck trying to time it right. Made worse by the fact that the upgraded shield belt does exactly the same thing, and in order to punch the explosive in the first place, you have to put away the weapon you are using. In the middle of battle.
VideoGame.The Legend Of Zelda The Wind Waker: When you find the pirate ship docked at Windfall Island, 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 Waves this by implying that you need to say it "exactly right" (inflections and all, apparently).
VideoGame.Escape From St Marys: The Game Within a Game you have to beat includes a maze, the solution for which is hidden somewhere else in St Mary's. Entering the sequence will only work if you've found the solution (as well as making the connection between it and the game); if you discover what the solution is before your character does so in-game, it won't work.
Webcomic.Adventurers: Upon finding the fourth energy crystal, Karn 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.
VideoGame.Metroid Other M: Happens a lot in the game. For instance, getting the speed booster requires you to go down a long corridor until you reach an ice wall that you need the speed booster to break; it's not until you turn back that your commander allows you to use the speed booster.
VideoGame.Vivisector Beast Within: You progress through the first half of the game by activating a series of checkpoints in order. 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.
VideoGame.Little Big Adventure: A subversion and quite possibly a case of Developer's Foresight as an answer to why The Island of the Volcano is completely optional. If you already know where the Mosquebee queen is being held, the game doesn't force you to go learn the location before actually having to find the captured queen. Another subversion is the search for the lost Francos Key Fragment. If you already know where the Key Fragment is buried in the ground, you don't have to follow along with Roger de la Fontaine's mystery to learn of the Key Fragment's location. After purchasing a Pick Axe from the Franco Island store, you can just head on over to the Fragment Key's ground location to dig it up.
VideoGame.Okami: You have to accept a scenario, Rao's deception in order to get the shrinking mallet. You have to kill the Water Dragon to get the Dragon Orb. This may or may not be justified, depending on if you interpret things as Ammy knowing the future and choosing the hard but correct path, or Ammy being foolish.
