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Cutting the Knot
- 308 statements
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The Hero has only a limited amount of time to do something, be it rescue, transport, repair, or simply Outrun the Fireball. But he has a problem. A very complicated problem that would need time to solve, time the hero definitely doesn't have. After trying in vain to solve the problem the technical way, the hero Takes a Third Option: getting rid of the problem altogether, usually with violence. Smash it down, break it apart, run right through it, blow it up. Whatever he does, he "solves" the problem by either causing so much damage that it's not his problem anymore, or via a solution that no one in their right mind would think of/should be capable of. If the hero ever does this, then he's Cutting the Knot. When the smart character is trying to find a way around it and the dumb character resorts to violence, the dumb character is often Too Dumb to Fool. When The Leader tramples over objections to prevent Divided We Fall, this often comes into play. Often parodied, such as where the hero tries to destroy the problem, only to succeed in destroying everything but the problem. It can be stopped by Self-Destructing Security. Heroes who make a habit of doing this may boast that We Do the Impossible. The term comes from the Gordian Knot, an apocryphal tale surrounding Alexander the Great. The city of Phrygia had an oxcart tied to a post by a previous ruler that was so intricately and impossibly complex that an oracle declared whoever could unravel the knot would be ruler of both the city and eventually all of Asia. When Alexander arrived in the city his answer to the knot problem was to cut it with his sword. Rather than considered to be breaking the spirit of the legend, it's been said to champion the idea of alternative solutions. Compare with Debate and Switch (when done with a philosophical rather than physical problem), Dungeon Bypass, Murder Is the Best Solution, Myopic Architecture, "Open!" Says Me, Percussive Maintenance, Sequence Breaking, Steal the Surroundings, Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay, Outside-the-Box Tactic, and Take a Third Option. Contrast We Have the Keys or There Was a Door, where violence is the complex solution, and Simple Solution Won't Work, where somebody shows or explains why doing this won't actually solve the problem. See also Impossible Task, in which this trope is often the only solution. If an authority figure berates you or even punishes you for this trope, see No Fair Cheating. |
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Watchmen features the Gordian Knot Lock Company (one of many companies owned by Ozymandias, who fancies himself a new Alexander the Great). Rorschach breaks the door down. Several times. This is actually a clue as to Ozymandias' endgame: the U.S. and Soviet Union are on the verge of nuclear war, and have been at each other's throats for so long that it has become impossible to untangle them from their conflict. So he plans to cut the knot by introducing a third side for them to unite themselves against—a genetically engineered monster that he teleports to New York, killing half the city. What's frightening is that—at least initially—it works. A case of Enemy Mine, if you think about it. Long ago, Nazi Germany united both sides as a target to destroy. Oz' simply invents a "knot-cutting sword" that they won't learn is nonexistent, at least until peaceful coexistence is already a reality. The only Epic Fail in reasoning here is the assumption that both sides will automatically endure as political entities. Fittingly though, no one is ever seen picking the locks. |
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Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog: Captain Hammer, when faced with a complex electronic device controlling a van, punches it so it breaks. This just stops Dr Horrible from controlling it, leaving a fast moving, out of control van that almost kills someone before Horrible can stop it. Not that Hammer even notices. | |
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Political satirist Jreg suggests nuking the entire Middle East as a way to solve the Arab–Israeli Conflict. | |
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Marvelman/Miracleman stayed out of print for over twenty years due to numerous legal battles over who held the rights. During a trial concerning several intellectual property disputes between Neil Gaiman and Todd McFarlane it came out in testimony that the editor of Warrior magazine never actually held the rights to the character; he only found that they were held by the state as part of a bankruptcy deal, so it was unlikely that anyone was going to sue them for publishing a new series. Therefore the rights which everyone was fighting over didn't even exist. Marvel went and bought the real rights to Marvelman and ended the legal battle. It should be noted that this lawsuit started in the first place because of ownership disputes between McFarlane and characters that Gaiman had created for Spawn, particularly the character Angela. McFarlane hoped to use the Miracleman rights (which Gaiman had been spending years to try to re-acquire in full so he could finish the story) as a bargaining chip. Once it was revealed McFarlane was essentially bluffing with an empty hand, the judge awarded Gaiman the full rights to Angela, which he then promptly sold to Marvel as part of the Miracleman deal to be a new character in Thor. Needless to say, it's a safe bet Angela will never appear in a Spawn comic ever again. |
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Happens multiple times in a Linus Tech Tips Tech Support Challenge live stream featuring Jayz Two Cents and Gamers Nexus' Steve Burke. Both are expected to diagnose and fix numerous defects with a pre-prepared PC, with deliberately introduced faults including disconnected or poorly-wired components in the case and severe performance issues caused by changes in the BIOS. Steve saves a significant amount of time on diagnosis by simply dismantling the computer and reassembling it on a test bench from scratch in a known-good configuration, then resetting the entire BIOS back to factory settings. | |
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DEATH BATTLE!: In Blanka vs Pikachu, Blanka wins by biting Pikachu's head off. In The Shredder vs Silver Samurai, it was noted in the postmortem that the fight depended on who could land a lethal hit first, or that Oroku could simply chug some Mutagen, become Super Shredder, and demolish Harada via his superior strength and durability. Which is exactly what happened in the fight. |
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In Batman: Zero Year, this is lampshaded. The Riddler has Batman in a Death Trap, and he has to solve a series of riddles to save the city. For the third riddle, he says the answer is "a blade", and Nygma says no, the solutions to all the riddles were based on famous riddles of antiquity, and the answer to that one was "a knot" as in the Gordian Knot. Batman then reveals that Gordon has managed to stop the threat to the city, leaving him free to punch the Riddler; the solution to the Gordian Knot was a blade. | |
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Linkara shows how he deals with Soup Cans in his Silent Hill reviews: Silent Hill: Dying Inside alternate ending: His door is covered with unbreakable chains (as per Silent Hill 4)? Yeah, well, the wall they're attached to is plasterboard—he just rips them loose. Silent Hill: Dead/Alive: There's a paper bag in front of his door that can't be moved without "something needlessly complex and crafted from several parts"? Screw that, he's just going to shoot it. By the point of Silent Hill: The Grinning Man, the soup cans have gotten wise. Linkara finds boxes blocking his door and threatens to turn them to ashes if they don't move—and they promptly fall over, out of the way. |
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In Super Sons, Robin plans on burning a hole through the roof of a warehouse in order to gain access. Superboy points out that the front door is open. | |
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The Anglo/American – Nazi War presents an Alternate History where the Nazis manage to win the battle for Stalingrad which results in a series of events that lead to German victory in the east, and stalemate and ceasefire in the west. When hostilities between the Nazi pan-European empire and the Allies are re-commenced in 1954, the Allies, having learned the lesson of the urban meatgrinder of Stalingrad, simply bomb every city to rubble whenever the Germans want to stand and fight in it. There's not much left of urban Europe when they finish. | |
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In The Last Unicorn, Schmendrick tries various spells to free the titular unicorn from its cage. After a few unsuccessful tries, he produces a set of keys he has stolen to open the cage. | |
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Whateley Universe example: in "Boston Brawl 2", the Necromancer creates a horrific rip in time-space that the mages try to magically repair. Instead, Bladedancer just slices through it with Destiny's Wave. | |
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Deconstructed in Adventure Time Graphic Novels Volume 1: Playing With Fire, Flame Princess does this after getting fed up with the first Puzzle in the Dragon's Puzzle Dungeon and proceeds to blast her way through the dungeon until she ends up in a chamber with a water fall. Jake then proceeds to point out that just simply blasting your way out of a puzzle only creates a series of endless puzzle rooms till you take the time to solve them. | |
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Superman: Doomsday: Superman's clone, when he was obedient to Luthor, would go into Luthor's red sunlit safe room and submit to beatings from Luthor with Kryptonite gloves. When the clone turns on Luthor, Luthor retreats to the safe room, puts on the gloves and dares the Superclone to attack. The clone instead closes the door from the outside and then rips the entire room out of the building with Luthor in it. Luthor was last seen in critical condition in a hospital at the end. | |
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Sentinels of the Multiverse: Apostate's deck is about tons of evil relics that he can sacrifice to preserve his life. Some teams can meticulously wipe the relics before killing him; others might prefer to just kick the shit out of Apostate until he runs out of stuff, since his deck protects his relics much better than it protects him. Wager Master can be vulnerable to this. While some of his challenges make reducing his health an insta-loss, most don't, making beating him up quickly and mercilessly a sometimes-viable strategy...particularly if What Do You Really Know is out. |
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In Higurashi: When They Cry for the first arcs people tend to take this approach because they feel the other options just aren't good enough. For example, in the third question arc,note Though it also comes up in most of the arcs, especially Tsumihoroboshi which is focused around Satoko, she's in a terrible situation. Numerous possibilities are gone through and discarded before a more direct approach is taken. Ultimately, though, Higurashi does not support this conclusion and it's one of the aesops you can pull out of the story that even if the other guy really has it coming and is a complete scumbag with no redeeming qualities, murder just isn't the answer. | |
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Nodwick: Yeagar shows how he deals with Only Smart People May Pass (and that is hardly the only time he does so). He has a similar reaction to cursed swords with the equivalent of Developer's Foresight. |
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In one Cream Heroes video, Claire sets up a series of increasingly narrow bridges for her cats to cross, with a treat on the stools that hold them together as a reward. DD's response? Walk up to each stool and reach up for the treat without using the bridges. Claire even remarks it's a high IQ move from him. | |
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In one issue of Impulse, the Riddler challenges Impulse to find a bomb hidden in Manchester. Impulse promptly goes over the town with his superspeed and is back with the bomb even before the Riddler's done reading his clue. | |
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In another issue of JLA, the team is facing a version of Amazo, the Power Copying android, who's been programmed to automatically duplicate the powers of all members of the League. They try to fight him conventionally, but Amazo's too powerful. They temporarily draft some new members to the League — so Amazo just copies their powers. Finally, the Atom jumps on Superman's shoulder and whispers an idea. Superman shouts, "Attention! The Justice League is hereby disbanded!" Amazo promptly collapses, powerless. The team re-formed once Amazo was safely in custody. | |
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Ultra Fast Pony. The episode "Faith to Faith" (parodying the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000") manages to end the central conflict of the episode before it even begins. In the MLP:FIM version, the Apple family gets into a cider-making competition with the Flim Flam Brothers, a match which very nearly costs them their farm. In UFP's version, Applejack calls the proposed cider-making competition a stupid idea, and tells Flim and Flam to piss off. Which they do. | |
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Silent Hill: Dying Inside alternate ending: His door is covered with unbreakable chains (as per Silent Hill 4)? Yeah, well, the wall they're attached to is plasterboard—he just rips them loose. | |
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Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc: When the class is confronted with the Headmaster's Office, which is locked but probably has important clues inside, Yasuhiro points out that they don't need to find a key, they have Sakura with them. Monokuma promptly adds a rule against breaking down locked doors. However, Sakura does later break the door open as her 'revenge' against Monokuma for blackmailing her; she didn't need to fear his retribution because she planned to commit suicide. | |
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Kung Fu Panda: At one point during the battle with Tai Lung over the Dragon Scroll, Po throws a dozen woks on and around the scroll and rapidly shuffles them back and forth with a pair of bamboo stalks to force Tai Lung to find the right wok in a high-speed version of the Shell Game. Tai Lung isn't playing around though and just smashes all the woks aside in one swipe. | |
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Mr. Welch essentially has the same relationship with GMs' carefully constructed plots that a weedwacker has with grass. | |
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In one of the tie-in books to anarchic TV comedy show The Goodies, a spoof children's puzzle page sets the boys the problem of navigating a maze to a desirable prize at the other end. The problem is phrased as "Win the X by getting from point A to point B in the shortest route". Tim of course gets lost in the maze and whimpers. Graeme ignores the maze completely and walks right round the outside, arguing this is the quickest route from A to B. Bill purloins a JCB with an attachment for uprooting hedges and bulldozes straight through the middle.note He emerges on the other side with Tim in the JCB bucket. | |
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Batman often does this in Justice League. In their initial fight, he loses to Prometheus because his foe downloaded the fighting abilities of several great martial artists (one of them was Batman himself). In the rematch, Batman wins because he switched that disc with another, containing the fighting skills of Professor Stephen Hawking. In another JLA story, the league is fighting the General, who has some of the highest levels of invulnerability and regeneration in The DCU along with tremendous super strength and no Kryptonite Factor. Batman's solution was to hypnotize the General and lure him to a bulk matter teleporter. It would have worked if the League hadn't barged in at that moment. But they accomplish the same thing by knocking him around with brute force until he's on the teleporter pad. |
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Puss in Boots: The Last Wish: "Big" Jack Horner is a wicked Collector of the Strange who keeps many smuggled magical artifacts as a major part of his weapon/gadget arsenal, and his solution to overcoming any obstacle in his way is to simply use a lot of manpower and magical items. One of the artifacts he found is Excalibur, which he wasn't able to remove from the stone it was lodged in (due to him not being worthy enough to hold it as a villain). He retorted to dig the stone out of the ground, and now wields the sword with the stone still attached as a bludgeoning weapon. Although it's possible to get through the flowers in the Pocketful of Posies by taming them with kindness as shown by Perrito beforehand (which he did when Puss and Kitty also tried to dodge them without actually attacking them), the only solution Jack can think of is using his Baker's Dozen to cut the plants up. The result is that the posies fight and devour the bakers formidably due to their replicating capability; seeing the grim situation his henchmen are in, Jack improvises by using a phoenix as a flamethrower. |
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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has a scene where Miles and Peter have broken into Oscorp and are trying to hack into a computer to get some information, but the owner is such a mess that even her desktop is a huge slop of a mess with files upon files overlapping. Miles gets around this by just stealing the whole computer. | |
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Red vs. Blue: In season 3, Church is implanted with ten megaton bomb which proceeds to destroy the present and send everyone into the future, except for himself who instead gets sent into the past (don't ask). After returning to the present, Church makes several attempts to disarm the bomb in his former self only to be constantly met with failure, including making several copies of himself. At one point, his plan is as follows: In season 8, Sarge uses his contingency plan when the team's attempt to bluff their way past the computer fails. The contingency plan being "shotgun to the face". |
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Globehunters: An Around The World In 80 Days Adventure: In the lab locker room, Eddie tries to break into Wilkins' locker by picking the padlock with one of his own hairs. Sasha, feeling Eddie's method is taking too long, breaks the lock in half with her paw. | |
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Misfit City: When the girls find Captain Denby's chest is locked, and that there's no key, Macy decides to chop the padlock off with a sword. | |
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Discussed in Freeman's Mind Season 2, where Gordon claims doing this just makes you looks like a brute who was too stupid to solve the problem the intended way, and that if you truly wanted to show your superiority you would solve it the right way first and then cut it. In the exact same episode, he cuts two knots in his path while calling himself a problem-solving genius for doing so. Both methods he used were modded in and not possible to do in the normal game. Talk about not solving your problems the intended way! | |
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On one occasion, Thorgal's wife Aaricia is shown a ring tied to a frame with three cords, and challenged to cut them all with a single arrow. She walks over to the frame and cuts all the ropes with the head of the arrow he's holding in his hand. | |
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In another JLA story, the league is fighting the General, who has some of the highest levels of invulnerability and regeneration in The DCU along with tremendous super strength and no Kryptonite Factor. Batman's solution was to hypnotize the General and lure him to a bulk matter teleporter. It would have worked if the League hadn't barged in at that moment. But they accomplish the same thing by knocking him around with brute force until he's on the teleporter pad. | |
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Tintin "Explorers on the Moon": Being back on Earth, mission control Mr Baxter has to use rather creative methods to help the protagonists in space. But when rocket finally lands and the crew can't open the doors because they've already passed out from lack of oxygen, Baxter just elects to hack the rocket open with electric saws to get them out in time. | |
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Toy Story 2: The heroes are trying to rescue Woody with help of Utility Belt Buzz. When asked how they're going to get past a grate in order to attack who they think are evil toys torturing Woody, Utility Belt Buzz says, "Use Your Head!" Cut to Rex being used as a battering ram, screaming, "But I don't want to use my head!" before crashing through. Earlier in the film, the actual Buzz owned by Andy gets stuck behind the automatic door of Al's Toy Barn. After a few attempts at trying to open the door himself, Buzz simply knocks over a nearby stack of board games and puzzles to get it to open. |
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In The Shredder vs Silver Samurai, it was noted in the postmortem that the fight depended on who could land a lethal hit first, or that Oroku could simply chug some Mutagen, become Super Shredder, and demolish Harada via his superior strength and durability. Which is exactly what happened in the fight. | |
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Preacher: The section that shows Herr Starr's background and turn to villainy includes a bit where, as part of his training in GSG 9, Starr is confronted by a sadistic unarmed combat instructor known for beating new recruits viciously. In front of the class, the instructor demands to know how Starr would defeat him in hand to hand combat as an obvious prelude to inflicting such a beating on Starr. Starr responds by shooting the instructor in the leg and saying that he never intends to be unarmed. GSG decided that it showed innovation, and it was one of the things that caught The Grail's eye. And continuing this trend of lateral thinking, Starr is tasked by The Grail, as an initiation trial, to identify and assassinate a defector from their organization who is trying to spread the word about them and is currently confined in a mental hospital. Instead of finding some clever way to infiltrate the hospital as a patient, staff, or even visitor, and eliminating only his target, Starr simply blows up the hospital and everyone in it. This earns him admittance into The Grail and being appointed one of the highest ranks within the organization as it shows ruthless efficiency, a willingness to sacrifice innocents in service of the "Greater Good", and as an added bonus there's no chance in anybody taking an interest in the death of the "lone nut" as they might if only that guy died when it appears that his death is simply collateral damage in a terrorist attack. Even if somehow an investigation decided that the "terrorist attack" wasn't what it appeared and somebody destroyed the hospital to kill one person there, they'd have hundreds of patients and staff who might be the target, making it nigh impossible to solve. |
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Notable Magic: The Gathering player Zvi Mowshowitz used the line "If brute force doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough. Why not use more?" in a column on proper Magic strategy. Even more so recently, because contrary to his original "famous" deck, Turbo Lands, his recent decks in the past season have all been super-aggressive aggro decks, with some of them winning on turn 3 or 4. |
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In The Incredible Hercules the title character is presented with a game of dark elven chess that he must solve to pass the Test of Mind. He responds by referencing The Kobayashi Maru (Not The Kobayashi Maru, but Kirk's handling of it), saying that when faced with an impossible situation one should change the rules of the game, and knocks over the table. Princess Alfyse is delighted with his resourcefulness, and other things, while her adviser starts to point out that it's not an impossible situation, he just had to move the rook... | |
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In the Dragon Recipe, a sword in the stone style contest is resolved when a girl checks to confirm that the rules are simply "Remove The Sword From The Stone". Her solution? She pulls out a hammer and chisel, then breaks open the stone. | |
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In the Yogscast video Cracking the Case - Invisible Inc Challenge when they are unable to unlock the case they try to do this, first using bolt cutters and various power tools and when that fails Kim flattens the case with a tank, which has the side effect of destroying everything in the case and this was just after the rest of the Yogscast had made progress with the lockpicks. Sjin's 'Facing Worlds' PVP map included a number of complex obstacles and hazards which players had to avoid while crossing the map - and jetpacks, meaning all the participants simply flew from one side to the other with only their opponents to hinder them. They removed the jetpacks for the second round. |
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From YouTube lockpicking expert Lock Picking Lawyer: While he usually will pick every lock just for the sake of it, if he can find a way to defeat the lock without picking, he will show that off (typically without even picking it normally, since ones with glaring weaknesses like this tend to be so cheap that they fall to proper picking in two seconds). One such tactic is shimming, where he slides a thin piece of metal inside to defeat the latch directly. Another is to simply remove the hinges and open the lid that way, or remove the back cover of the lock and access the internal mechanisms directly. He's also utilized considerably clever tactics like using a powerful magnet to flick the internal latch or a hook slid through an office building's door to pull the bar from the inside. Failing any of that, he's not above taking a hacksaw or bolt cutters to a lock. He's even managed to open locks with sticks, forks, and on one occasion, a LEGO man, without ever once actually "picking" them. His wife is the same too. He once tried to get her interested in lockpicking by locking up her Ben and Jerry's ice cream with their official Pint Lock, which LPL describes as being trivially easy to open by feel, and leaving it in their freezer. When he returns, he shows that his wife had simply cut off the bottom of the container. This video has him discuss this tendency among professional locksmiths before then subverting the trope. A viewer had to call a locksmith to help remove the lock from his bike after he lost the key, who became irate when asked if he could just pick the lock instead of completely destroying it, saying he was tired of people watching videos on YouTube and thinking locks can magically be picked open in 2 seconds and claiming LPL was the worst of the bunch, calling his videos "complete bullshit". After some back-and-forth, the viewer and locksmith agreed to let him send the destroyed lock to LPL, and if he could pick it open in less time than the 2 minutes and 14 seconds it took for the locksmith to cut it open, he would refund the $75 he charged for it. LPL found the most polite way possible to say that he's not surprised that the locksmith in question would look at a Kryptonite lock and immediately conclude it "couldn't be picked" simply because he himself lacked the tools and/or know-how to pick it, before getting it open in 28 seconds. |
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Avengers: Back to Basics: The Desir bind Pepper Potts with Gleipnir, a magical chain that, as they gloat to Iron Man when he tries to slice through it with a laser, cannot be cut, broken, or melted in any way. Tony deals with it by using a rocket to destroy the stone slab that Pepper is chained to. | |
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Likewise, in The Gamers: Humans & Households, the party has to enter a house in the suburbs. A note on the door says that the key is in the mailbox. However, the party believes the mailbox to be trapped, and thus don't dare to open it, since nobody has any ranks in Criminal (which they apparently need to disarm a trap). What do they do? Take the mailbox off the railing, throw through the window next to the door and climb inside and unlock the door from the inside. | |
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The Losers: The first act has the team tech Jensen having to copy the secure hard drives of Goliath, an oil company. When security finds out about the operation and exchange fire with his friends, he hacks the outer casing with an axe and pries the thing out whole. | |
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In an issue of Jon Sable, Freelance, Sable and an archaeologist are looking for treasure in a Central American pyramid. It's one of those designed so that a beam of sunlight shining through a hole in the wall will reveal the lock - but it only works on one day of the year that's months away. Sable points out that the ancient builders hadn't anticipated modern electricity and duplicates the effect with his flashlight. | |
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In the Strong Bad Email "virus", Strong Bad's computer starts leaking viruses into reality. The technician enlisted to fix the problem is Bubs, who fixes the problem by taking a shotgun to the computer. | |
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In Ars Magica, this is part of the theme of House Tytalus, and part of the background has an apprentice to a mage challenged, as his final exam, to open a box which his master has spent a long time enchanting. After gearing up, and throwing every spell at it that he had, the apprentice kneels in front of his master, acknowledging that he was not ready to be a full mage. His master then walks over to the box and pulls the lid open. He hadn't locked it. | |
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In Blanka vs Pikachu, Blanka wins by biting Pikachu's head off. | |
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Clover accidentally does this in the Laboratory level of Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors: while Junpei is trying to figure out the experiment that needs to be concluded for the doors to open, she ends up setting fire to the lab which causes the emergency program to unlock the doors. When the group comes across a password-locked computer, Lotus chooses to write a program to find the right password by brute force rather than searching for hints as to what the actual password is |
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The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: Towards the end, the Magnificence turns out to be a front for Eldritch Abominations, which start ranting about how they cannot be stopped and will return and consume everything, killing a few side characters with energy bolts in the process. So Nickel crushes the Magnificence into powder, which shuts 'em up real good. | |
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Fantastic Mr. Fox has a sequence where they need to choose who's going to jump over a fence with barbed wire, slide under tire spikes, etc., until one of them points out there's another path with no obstacles. | |
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Sjin's 'Facing Worlds' PVP map included a number of complex obstacles and hazards which players had to avoid while crossing the map - and jetpacks, meaning all the participants simply flew from one side to the other with only their opponents to hinder them. They removed the jetpacks for the second round. | |
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