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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object

 Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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 Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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The scenery in games has been known to do awfully strange things. For example, say you're finishing up a sidequest. You've just found all three sacred stones and put them next to the magic fountain. As you walk back to collect your reward, everything seems normal— What the hell! Since when did that harmless bush have spikes?
The Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object is a monster that is usually part of the scenery, or at least something benign, much like the Ambushing Enemy and Chest Monster. It becomes dangerous as soon as a certain condition is met. Usually, they become harmless again the moment the condition is no longer met, although it's sometimes permanent.
Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_1'); })These can be used for several purposes. Sometimes, they're used to prevent backtracking, to make an easy area more dangerous, or to make subsequent playthroughs of the game more difficult.
The Event Flag may be triggered by an Artefact of Doom.
Compare Empty Room Until the Trap.
A staple of Platform Hell. See Chest Monster for when there's no Event Flag. Often a type of Ninja Prop. Compare Savage Setpiece where the event flag to trigger the monster is provoking it.
 Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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Dropped link to AmbushingEnemy: Not an Item - FEATURE
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Dropped link to FaceHugger: Not an Item - FEATURE
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Dropped link to FlamingSword: Not an Item - FEATURE
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 Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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DBTropes
 Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object / int_2fc7f6b9
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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Donkey Kong Country Returns: On Sunset Shores, the player is given a chance to enjoy the scenery before things get hard, when bushes uproot themselves and chase after you.
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Shivers has evil spirits known as the Ixupi, which hide in different materials. Every time you enter a room, it's possible that an Ixupi could be lurking there. One minute, you're looking at a pile of ashes; the next, a monster jumps out of it and bites you.
 Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object / int_3ad8d471
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 Shivers (Video Game)
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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In Puzzle Quest 2, some gameboards have solid 'bricks' that cannot be moved or interact with anything. All they do is get in the way a bit. Perfectly harmless. However, some enemies (specifically, most Undead enemies) can use a move called 'Wake The Dead' that causes a random 'brick' to turn into a lethal 5 Skull - without ending their turn. The move is cheap, too, so you can easily end up in a situation where the enemy uses it three times in rapid succession, turning a harmless wall into a heavyweight 15-base-damage attack.
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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Ys: Ancient Ys Vanished ~ Omen has a chest in Darm Tower surrounded by statues that become Demonic Spiders once you take the treasure.
 Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object / int_3d532d77
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 Ys: Ancient Ys Vanished ~ Omen (Video Game)
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Super Metroid:
The various defunct robots in the Wrecked Ship segment come to life and attack your character when the power come back up.
You know those Chozo statues that Samus gets stuff from? Two of them try to kill you at different points in the game.
 Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object / int_45501b8c
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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Eversion:
The game has this with the flowers. The flowers remain more or less part of the background until 5-6, where they become spiky and are instadeath.
The water. In 4-5 and later, the famous demonic hands appear from the previously much less terrifying water.
Those strange rocks from Level 5 become harmful in X-7, and then become actual demons in X-8. note Only in version 1.7.3.
 Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object / int_4f82fde6
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 Eversion (Video Game)
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object / int_4f82fde6
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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In Don't Starve every time you chop down an evergreen, there's a minute chance a nearby one will transform into a hostile Treeguard.
 Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object / int_53435bc5
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 Don't Starve (Video Game)
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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Cave Story:
There are sixteen sky dragon eggs in the Egg Corridor. These appear normally (and are completely harmless) before you go to the Labyrinth. After you complete the Core and the Waterway, and regain access to the Egg Corridor, all the eggs have hatched, and most of the survivors are now dangerous zombie dragons.
There's also that door at the beginning that is a disguised enemy, the only one in the game actually. You might not even realize it since it's so sudden and so early.
 Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object / int_5e3832b5
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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Both Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II have statues and suits of armor coming to life sometimes to attack the party.
 Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object / int_629cd094
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 Dragon Age: Origins (Video Game)
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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Super Mario Bros. 2: Phantos look like background scenery until you pick up a key... and then one of them chases you through the entire level until you use said key on a door. There is also the final hawk-head doorway, which attacks your character when you pick up the crystal that otherwise opens its earlier counterparts in the game.
 Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object / int_62bf542
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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Super Mario Bros. 3: There's the sun in two levels of the game. First you think "Why the heck does the sun have a FACE?" Then it tries to kill you.
 Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object / int_62bf543
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
 Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object / int_8258e260
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Super Mario Bros.:
Super Mario Bros. 2: Phantos look like background scenery until you pick up a key... and then one of them chases you through the entire level until you use said key on a door. There is also the final hawk-head doorway, which attacks your character when you pick up the crystal that otherwise opens its earlier counterparts in the game.
Super Mario Bros. 3: There's the sun in two levels of the game. First you think "Why the heck does the sun have a FACE?" Then it tries to kill you.
 Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object / int_8258e260
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 Super Mario Bros. (Franchise)
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object / int_8258e260
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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Final Fantasy IV gives us a dungeon full of demonic doors. Well, they stop actually being so sudden after you fought quite some, and that's exactly when you are rather surprised about one suddenly HARMLESS potentially harmful door. In the same dungeon you end up fighting A WALL as its respective boss. After a dozen doors that's not a surprise even.
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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There are lots of monsters like this in Xenoblade Chronicles X.
They tend to be completely indistinguishable from the bits of scenery they're disguising themselves as, and can't be targeted directly until they've revealed themselves, nor do they show on your radar. This can occasionally lead to you getting into a bigger fight then intended if an area effect attack happens to hit some hidden monsters accidentally.
While they don't disguise themselves, some of the robots and mechs utilized by Ganglion can be encountered in an inactive, untargetable state, only for them to suddenly spring to life and attack when approached. One will quickly learn that just because it looks broken doesn't mean that it necessarily is...
 Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object / int_8ec33aad
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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Kingdom Rush series:
The original game had the Pit of Fire stage where you see a sleeping Cerberus at one corner of the screen. It stays asleep until the final wave, after which it wakes up and attacks you as a Mini-Boss-level enemy.
Frontiers has the alien eggs in the Lost Jungle that start hatching out Parasytes after a certain wave passes, and Beresad in Beresad's Lair who starts out sleeping but will then start burning your towers to temporarily disable them.
Vengeance has the mech factory in Clockwork Factory which lies dormant for the first 7 waves. At the start of wave 8, a Dwarf pilot waddles into it, mechanical arms start moving into the factory as sparks fly, and then a MechaDwarf MK.9 slowly marches out as the first Giant Mook of the game. This sequence then occurs periodically for the rest of the waves to spawn more MechaDwarf MK.9s.
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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Remember those statues that you've been passing by the entire time in that tower in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker? Well, they turn into massive, spiked harbingers of death at times.
 Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object / int_a2dee471
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 The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (Video Game)
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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Gain Ground: The Boss of World 1 acts this way- it only activates once the other four mini-bosses in the level are defeated, and cannot be interacted with or damaged in any way until it activates. And surprise- it has TWO heads, so it shoots fireballs twice as often as its mini-boss counterparts!
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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In Age of Mythology, typing "FEAR THE FORAGE" into chat grants you a god power that turns berry bushes into sentient berry monsters to do your bidding.
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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Contra III: The Alien Wars has the alien dogs in the background of the first stage. Move past them, and they'll stop eating from the garbage and chase after you. They return in the City level of Contra 4.
 Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object / int_c5f50eb4
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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In Sacred, assuming you have equipment that allows you to attack animals, a bunny or other innocent creatures can become a deadly foe if your level is low and the difficult settings are at maximum.
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The second Spyro the Dragon game has a cruel yet funny example in Fracture Hills. The level is scattered around with bushes and trees to make it prettier - except that some of those bushes suddenly come to life and eat you if you get too close, and some of the trees wake up and shake their branches to incite the bees in a beehive to sting you. The only way to recognize bad trees from harmless ones is the presence of the beehive - no such luck with the bushes, meaning your best strategy is to torch every last one you see, just in case.
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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Tower of Heaven eventually does this with the living things due to its book of laws.
 Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object / int_f0235bc8
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

 Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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Adverbly Adjective Noun
 Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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Video Game Difficulty Tropes
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object
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Suddenly Harmful Harmless Object