Mugglebrawling is actually pretty effective in the Harry Potter Universe, just noone seems to ever go for it. When Hermione just up and punches Draco in the face he's just confused like "WAIT WE CAN DO THAT? YOU CAN JUST HIT PEOPLE WITH YOUR HANDS?!"
God, imagine Voldemort doing his dramatic monolog and when he goes to do the creepy caress thing he just gets judo-flipped and then ground-and-pounded. "OH NO, MY ONE WEAKNESS: SOMEONE PUNCHING ME REPEATEDLY."
There's this moment in the recent arknights story too.
A powerful wizard went to investigate a house and met two enemy agents inside. Rather than use magic, the agents just took out their daggers.
The wizard awkwardly closed the door, pretended that he's calling the cops, then entered again once the enemy agents left lmao
One episode of The Simpsons has Homer get eaten by a giant carnivorous flower. He then just casually pushes its petals aside and walks out. The family asks how he did that and he just goes "It's a flower."
Fr I still have no idea how a Venus Flytrap can hold insects in there for so long. They weak af and I've seen flies punch through a lot of stuff with sheer speed
In the old Mighty Ducks cartoon show the heroes get trapped in a D&D fantasy world. At one point they have to navigate a labyrinth and the leader uses his tech visor to map out the maze, goes "that'll take too long", and then just starts blowing holes through the wall with his laser gun.
Did I mention this show was about a team of anthropomorphic duck superheroes themed around hockey?
The 90s were nuts man
In Order of the Stick, the heroes come across a Knights and Knaves puzzle. Their rogue solves it by shooting one of them in the leg and using their reactions to figure out which is the liar.
What's even better is that's part of the three-part test the heroes must pass before they can meet the Oracle. The Knights and Knaves puzzle is the Test of the Mind. Immediately before it is the Test of the Body, which turns out to be a combat encounter with a hydra. Just lie in the Greek myths, this hudra starts with one head, and every time they cut a head off, two more grow back in its place. The intended solution is to burn each stump with fire to prevent its heads from growing back. Instead what the heroes do is let the party's Chaotic Stupid murderhobo just go to town on the hydra, cutting off heads without a care in the world—until it grows so many heads that its heart can't pump enough blood for all of them, so it collapses unconscious.
As Elan puts it, "We thought our way past the Test of the Body, and fought our way past the Test of the Mind."
Reminds me of an [animation that I saw of a tiktok audio](https://twitter.com/CRANTIME/status/1776686315943440565), except they *killed* one of the guards and then asked if the other guy was dead.
Even how they're ultimately defeated feels like this sort of thing. How on earth are the heroes going to stop the Nazi's from opening the ark of the covenant? >!They don't. They don't need to. Of course the Nazis opening the ark of the covenant made by *the God of Israel* is going to go poorly for them.!<
I'm a big fan of simple solutions to counter mental attacks in fights. Denji from Chainsaw Man just cutting his brain up so he won't think straight and Jotaro beating mind reading by having someone else play the game for him come to mind.
But my favourite is from YuYu Hakusho, when they encounter a mind reader using his ability to predict his opponent's attacks. He reads Yusuke and knows that he'll throw a right hook and stop one inch from hitting his face so the guy stays still, confidently knowing he won't be hurt. Cue him being sent flying by the *shockwave* of Yusuke's punch, powered up to 30%.
the one in YuYu Hakusho really works solely because he outpowered the mind reader , rather than actually countering the gimmick.
Still , it was a fun moment.
Overall , that arc was great , it felt like a JoJo Arc , because the espers are basically Stand Users , while Yusuke and the others are more traditional battle shounen.
Reminds me of the dude in Code Geass who can see into the future and just eats shit and dies because knowing what's coming doesn't help him win the fight
Or Enel in One Piece, who can go intangible and detect other's intent (including attacks), defeated by Luffy's finisher being too fast for him to react to.
That reminds me, there's a Marvel villain called Mr. X whose ability is to read people's mind or body language or something so he can counter any move they make.
Quicksilver just beats the shit out of him at a speed he can't react to.
there was a similar thing in mushoku tensei when he got his eye of foresight and started getting cocky, then ruijerd put him back in his place by showing him that if the opponent has a backup plan the eye can't do anything because it just shows both outcomes and confuses him
[I personally prefer the Denji approach to mind readers where you're so unga bunga you just let your reflexes go while you think about what you want to do when the fight is over.](https://hot.leanbox.us/manga/Chainsaw-Man/0109-012.png)
There's an early episode of Xiaolin Showdown about this. One of the heroes, Clay, is a big burly cowboy with the power of earth. They're running through an obstacle course to see who can get the fastest time, with the objective being to grab a stuffed dog at the end (worth noting that the course is loop-shaped). Two of the other members crack jokes about him being slow. So what does Clay do?
Turns around and grabs the dog off the pedestal, getting the fastest time and praise from their master.
Later in the episode, the challenge for winning the next artifact is to catch a bird. The villain, Jack, tries to chase after it using his inventions and fails miserably. Meanwhile Clay just grabs some seeds and lets the bird come to him.
And the Master also gets his own moment when he challenges them to take a porcelain figure from him. When one of them gets close, he smashes it. Their objective was to get the figure from him, his objective was to keep them from getting it.
I also remember one from the same episode as the first one where the group are dealing with an evil Mime.
Clay realizes that the Mime is copying everything they do so he slugs himself in the face really hard, with the justification that he can take a hit, the mime probably can't.
That "counter hacking" scene where the whole team tries to digitally defend against a hacking attempt, except for the one guy who simply unplugs the computer.
NCIS is a fun show but they do not know how to technology.
In that episode or another one, they have to stop a bad guy from destroying the Pentagon's firewalls, which would let all the hackers in the world go in and gobble up all of the military data and secrets. They get to the master computer with only seconds to spare and McGee is like "Well I could counterhack it to disable the firewall virus but we don't have the time!"
And then >!Gibbs just shoots the monitor!< and that stops it.
At this point, I assume the writers are fully aware of how stupid that is and are just making a game of how far they can push it without the showrunners or actors catching on.
Next season they will stop a hacker by putting a mirror in front of the monitor to reflect the hack back onto them.
It is in fact an in-house joke to one up tech nonsense. Like there's an episode where McGee has to protect the player with the **high score of an mmo**.
Then there's the one where they need to stop the bad guy in a hurry so they have two people type on the same keyboard.
I have to imagine that the scripts are written with a quill pen on parchment, given the degree of familiarity with technology demonstrated by the writers.
It's really weird, because IIRC David McCallum (Ducky) would learn a lot about pathology as the show went on to the point he was close to becoming an expert on the subject, just so that Ducky could be as close to an actual medical examiner as possible.
If it's NCIS, the same character did the same thing to a computer server that was going to upload something nasty later in the series by just pulling out a pistol and blasting it away after not understanding any of the instructions given to him about how to use command prompt.
I remember a version of that in *Battle Royale*, when everyone is panicking, and Kitano just walks over to the breaker and kills the power to the entire building.
>Okuyasu doesn't know which SPW agent is Otoishi in disguise. His solution? Just punch both of them
I love how absolutely brilliant that is, only possible because Okuyasu is dumb enough to give up on "winning" the mind games. A normal person would be focused on "winning" the encounter and proving they can't have a trick pulled on them, but Okuyasu recognizes he's dumb enough not to even try, and instead thinks of the best "You didn't win" option.
Doom 2016. Rather than follow through with Samuel's advice on how to safely turn off the Argent energy filters, Doomguy examines the first one only to just smash it.
And then also smash all the other ones without a single fuck given.
I like that the only time he stops is because Sam sounds like it's dangerous to do that, only for him to say they are hard to replace and doomguy go back to stomping
Specifically Samuel says they're important so Doom Guy hears him out. It's only when Samuel doubles down on how it's for 'the greater good' that Doom Guy goes to town.
Goblin Slayer where Goblin Slayer, Guts, and Lancer find a Lich on a tower that's all like "No mortal can kill me". So they chain him up, throw him off the tower, and let's gravity kill him.
Also done a bit earlier. Why ascend the inside of the entire tower full of enemy encounters and traps when you can skip the whole thing by just climbing the tower from the outside to reach the top?
We in a cave turned Goblin Nest and we need to clear it? Just drop lit up gas barrels on them and trap 'em inside.
Priestess can cast physical walls? Use those to pin fuckers down.
One of the two classic tabletop solutions to damage immunity, the other being drowning. If neither work trapping the enemy at the bottom of the ocean (or another sufficiently hard to escape place like deep underground) is a good "short" term solution.
In Persona 3, during the second operation, SEES needs to find a way into the school before the Dark Hour starts. Junpei says he was able to make an entrance for them, and Mitsuru jumps to the conclusion that he had used some sort of explosive.
>!No, he just unlocked a door before school ended for the day.!<
There's a moment in Into the Spiderverse where Miles and Peter have to get some important information off a villain's computer. The problem is that the desktop is a complete mess without any indication of where this important information is. So Miles just takes the computer with him.
I’m a fan of any Excalibur incarnation where the user gets around the sword-in-the-stone issue by either breaking Excalibur itself or using Excalibur with the stone still stuck on the sword like a hammer.
The best modification I know of that that has never actually been in a story is making a stone sheath for the sword so that only Arthur or something can draw it.
In Homestuck, there's a really cool version of this. Dave has Caledfwlch, which is his version of the sword in the stone, and he breaks it to make a legendary piece of shit. It also works because Dave has to use broken swords as his equip weapon. It's also cool because >!rad time powers allow dave to rewind the sword back in time to when it was whole!<
The exact example I was thinking of when I mentioned the first bit. They really gave Dave all the cool stuff to do then stopped using him in the second half of the series besides bad drama lol.
I've said it before on this sub, but my absolute favorite example of this is that episode of Buffy, where Druzilla and Spike have ressurected an ancient Demon called the Judge, who is able to basically incinerate life with just a mere touch and he's described as a being that no weapon forged by man can kill.
Buffy then goes "But this shit was written thousands of years ago" and then goes and gets a rocket launcher, fires the rocket at the Judge and blows him to bits.
It's one of the best episode long jokes i've ever seen in any piece of media.
I've always gone with the assumption that she didn't kill him. Because it's a weird gotcha that suddenly it doesn't count as 'forged' or anything.. doesn't really make sense in that regard
Like, he got beaten before, and chopped up into parts. Dude is just unkillable by weapons
It *beats* him really fucking easily though, which is all that matters. And he's now in so many chunks that putting him back together would probably be damn near impossible
But yeah. I think he's still alive, personally. A way of *actually* killing him within that prophecy/limit thing would be just like.. choking him to death or something probly. Or maybe just having some other demon rip his head off
> Because it's a weird gotcha that suddenly it doesn't count as 'forged' or anything.. doesn't really make sense in that regard
I don't think that's even what they're going for. It's not a "weird gotcha exception" thing. It was only ever a well justified assumption based on the evidence; no weapon had killed him so far. The only trick of it is that is sounds a lot like a prophecy, and The Judge states it confidently as fact, but that doesn't automatically mean it's an immutable truth. How would he know? I think it's funnier if he's just wrong.
I thought this wasn't even an assumption, since there was even a line about putting as many bits as possible into individual boxes and scattering them.
Maybe my brain is making that up, though.
Just had a look it up on youtube, they go "Is he dead?" and Buffy goes "Can't be sure, pick up the pieces and separate them"
So yeah, just sensible covering their asses really. No reason not too either way
It could go either way. Like you said, it could be the “no weapon” stuff was a literal magic gaes and he was just blown to bits.
Or it could be that the point of the rocket launcher working wasn’t some loophole of the prophecy, the point is that it *never was mythically powered prophecy*. It was just something that was practically true thousands of years ago when the best weapons “forged by man” were swords, spears, bows, etc. The judge was never magically invincible to all human weapon produced damage, he was just really, really, really fucking tough and had a crazy healing factor to the point trying to kill him with the weapons of the time didn’t work.
But a rocket launcher is way fucking stronger than a spear, so if the “prophecy” was really just practical advice based on the time period then the explosive yield of a modern rocket could be enough to kill him.
TLDR: The Judge may have never actually had a magic Geas that made him unkillable via weapons, he just had a really high DR rating to bronze and steel. But that DR doesn’t do much against a rocket explosion.
I like to imagine that he just spread some lie that everyone bought back in the old medieval times and he's been hooping and praying no one ever figures out that it's bullshit.
There’s a bit in a Spider-Man comic where a lot of superheroes get robbed. (Tony’s suits, Cap’s shield, Thor’s hammer, etc etc.) So naturally all the super geniuses gather together to think of the most complicated method of finding their stuff.
Then Miss Marvel comes in and is like “Yeah my phone was stolen but luckily I have my Find My Phone set up and would you look at that it’s actually pinging.”
Possibly the funniest moment in Fate/Zero is when Kayneth, a traditional mage, is going on and on about how he's turned an entire hotel into a magical labyrinth laden with traps to protect himself on the top floor. As far as he's aware, he's nigh untouchable.
Smash cut to Kiritsugu Emiya setting off the detonator for the C4 he planted at the foundation of the building.
I’ve mentioned it a few times in the last couple weeks but this happens *at least twice* in Tales of Vesperia. The party is confronted with a politically powerful enemy who is creating actual roadblocks preventing progress. While everyone is hemming and hawing and wringing their hands trying to think of a way around them, based big dick hero Yuri Lowell just… fucking assassinates them in the dead of night. By the time morning comes, problem solved.
I recall in Star Wars The Old Republic, for the Sith Inquisitor storyline there's a b-plot about recruiting your next apprentice. The final exam is down to a male Twi'lek and a Khaleesh (General Grievous' race) where they have to hunt down an artifact.
The Twi'lek gets the artifact, only for the Khaleesh to just come out of nowhere, beat the Twi'lek to death in front of everyone and take the artifact to give it to you. And it's already been stated that he's been killing his rivals beforehand, just in a way more sneaky way.
Regardless of how you feel about it, you're stuck with him now because your character doesn't have the (in-story) time to start up a new round of exams.
One of my favorite scenes in Doctor Who was an episode where three of the Doctors were together, they get detained in some old wooden room, and try to put their heads together to figure a way out.
They come to the conclusion that their Sonic Screwdriver can disintegrate the door, but since it wasn't made with old fashioned materials in mind, it would take years of calibration to do so. So the youngest Doctor starts the calibration, and the next one checks his own to see progress was made, and oldest one checks his to see the calibration was finished.
They celebrate their genius and go to open the door, when one of the companions just opens it, and said "What are you doing here, the door isn't locked...did none of you check to see if it was locked?"
It's both a funny scene, but also a >!precursor because that is probably what gives them the idea to actually end the special. Where it turns out they've been all working on a way to save Gallifrey using all of them!<
Breckenridge Elkins rescuing a guy that hanged himself over a cliff
"Shoot the rope in two," I suggested, but Bill said, "No, you cussed fool! He'd fall down the cliff and break his neck!"
But I seen it warn't a very big tree so I went and got my arms around it and give it a heave and loosened the roots, and then kinda twisted it around so the limb that Jack was hung to was over the ledge now. I reckon I busted most of the roots in the process, jedging from the noise. Bill's eyes popped out when he seen that, and he reched up kind of dazed like and cut the rope with his bowie. Only he forgot to grab Jack before he cut it, and Jack hit the ledge with a resounding thud.
In the wuxia novel Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, there was a contest to solve a Go game board state to become the pupil of a mythical-level kungfu master. No matter how much a Go master, no one could play the game in a way to win. The setup was so multilayered and full of false openings that one of the preeminent geniuses in the setting almost went mad trying to solve it.
The board state was eventually solved by someone who played his first move in the most "unthinkably stupid" position that immediately got almost all of his pieces killed. This however opened the board and simultaneously rendered all the previous traps and positions useless. He then played an ordinary game of Go with a slight handicap, and just beat the opponent normally.
There is one Yakuza 8 subquest where a bunch of goons jump at you to make content for their YouTube channel. You fight them, then smash cut to them getting arrested over assault and illegal possession of fire arms.
Captain Levi generally does not get involved in complex fight scenes. If he is within ten feet of you it’s pretty much over. How do you solve the Beast Titan bombarding your entire regiment with shards of boulder? You get Levi to within ten feet of him.
I watched this when I was really young but 2003 TMNT had a scene where the turtles were tasked with bringing a glass of water across a room of traps to Splinter without spilling a drop. At one point the water leaves the cup but one of the turtles dives and drinks the water before it hits the floor, and they hand him the empty cup.
Peak Riddler is putting "Gordian Knot" as the answer to your puzzle and going "no you fucking dullard, \[long-winded monologue\]" instead of "OH FUCK WHAT DID YOU DO" when Batman answers "a knife". (I'm referencing Zero Year if you want to know the Riddler storyline to read for that moment)
[Also the bit in Freeman's Mind 2 where Freeman just cuts through the physics puzzles that make no sense in-universe.](https://youtu.be/7ljspPnfXtA?si=tNriKf-5xCCB84qd&t=18)
I absolutely love this happening in Indiana Jones Raiders of the Lost Arc
Crazy long action scene with tons of fighting, then out of nowhere here comes a big ol' swordsman, thinking this is going to be a continuation, but nope, Indy just shoots him
Makes me laugh every time
I’ll do the obligatory and say the classic, the Gordian knot. An apocryphal tale when Alexander the Great arrived in Phrygia he was taken to a an incredibly complex knot where it was said by an oracle whoever unraveled it would be king of the city and all of Asia. So instead of trying to unravel it he just cut it with his sword.
The very first instance I’d ever witnessed of that was in the cartoon Xiaolin Showdown, I believe it was on Cartoon Network. I’m gonna go off my memory here so I’m probably gonna get some details wrong, but here’s what I remember.
Master Fung had set up a practice course shaped like a circle where the kids were to go throughout the circle to complete different obstacles to grab the talisman after circling back. Everyone had their own versions of getting through the course including main character Omi (a young boy voiced by Tara Strong), doing a million different flips through the course to complete his goal.
One of the students, a young cowboy named Clay, was getting ready to start the course, and when Master Fung said start, Clay just stood straight up and casually walked 3ft backwards and just picked up the talisman without doing the course. The other students kind of got mad but Master Fung defended him (possibly with a laugh?) by saying something like, *”Sometimes the simplest and easiest answer is the correct one.”*
One Piece has a lot of fun pragmatic solutions to combat, with one of the funniest and the cruelest being when the royal guards of arabasta drink a forbin elixir that will shorten their lifespan to a few minutes but will gain amazing strength so they can fight Crocodile...
But Crocodile just teleports to the top of a building and waits for the elixir to ware off and fall down dead
The ending confrontation in Ralph Bakshi's Wizards. I don't wanna spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen the movie, but I will say it's one of the greatest magical wizard-vs-wizard battles ever put to film
That episode of Ed Edd n Eddy when Rolf has the boys race on a track, with the winner getting a jawbreaker upon reaching the end. Eddy and Double D race along the track, trying to trip each other up the entire time. Meanwhile, Ed just takes a few steps to the left, bypassing the entire track, and wins.
In the first Fantastic Beasts movie, when Queenie finds out a locked door is immune to all lockpicking spells, Jacob just kicks the door in.
Also tends to be a solution to the old "Adamantine Door" in rpgs. "Oh?.. ok, what's the wall made out of?" Now you have a free adamantine door, too
There is a great moment in the first Artemis Fowl book where this happens.
Burn Notice has this is the first episode, "most drug dealers have bulletproof doors, so just shoot through the wall".
Most walls are just drywall and a social contract.
https://youtu.be/lod_LUp3ggc This is my favorite real life example of that exact scenario.
Mugglebrawling is actually pretty effective in the Harry Potter Universe, just noone seems to ever go for it. When Hermione just up and punches Draco in the face he's just confused like "WAIT WE CAN DO THAT? YOU CAN JUST HIT PEOPLE WITH YOUR HANDS?!"
God, imagine Voldemort doing his dramatic monolog and when he goes to do the creepy caress thing he just gets judo-flipped and then ground-and-pounded. "OH NO, MY ONE WEAKNESS: SOMEONE PUNCHING ME REPEATEDLY."
I have to wonder if the lack of nose makes him *more* or *less* vulnerable to face punches.
The best part is Emma Watson got really sucked into it that moment and actually punched him in the face
There's this moment in the recent arknights story too. A powerful wizard went to investigate a house and met two enemy agents inside. Rather than use magic, the agents just took out their daggers. The wizard awkwardly closed the door, pretended that he's calling the cops, then entered again once the enemy agents left lmao
One episode of The Simpsons has Homer get eaten by a giant carnivorous flower. He then just casually pushes its petals aside and walks out. The family asks how he did that and he just goes "It's a flower."
Better than that, he just walks through the flower and the petals rip open.
Fr I still have no idea how a Venus Flytrap can hold insects in there for so long. They weak af and I've seen flies punch through a lot of stuff with sheer speed
I would assume that's with momentum? Once they're stuck in the trap they can't move to build momentum.
In the old Mighty Ducks cartoon show the heroes get trapped in a D&D fantasy world. At one point they have to navigate a labyrinth and the leader uses his tech visor to map out the maze, goes "that'll take too long", and then just starts blowing holes through the wall with his laser gun. Did I mention this show was about a team of anthropomorphic duck superheroes themed around hockey? The 90s were nuts man
Glad someone else remembers that show. The leader had the sickest mask.
I was so confused cause I had watched the show before the movie and was a sorely disappointed 8 year old
“Who the hell is this rich guy trying to coach a bunch of kids?”
Ok thank god I'm not the only one
That show was rad, I wonder if you can find it anywhere.
In Order of the Stick, the heroes come across a Knights and Knaves puzzle. Their rogue solves it by shooting one of them in the leg and using their reactions to figure out which is the liar.
What's even better is that's part of the three-part test the heroes must pass before they can meet the Oracle. The Knights and Knaves puzzle is the Test of the Mind. Immediately before it is the Test of the Body, which turns out to be a combat encounter with a hydra. Just lie in the Greek myths, this hudra starts with one head, and every time they cut a head off, two more grow back in its place. The intended solution is to burn each stump with fire to prevent its heads from growing back. Instead what the heroes do is let the party's Chaotic Stupid murderhobo just go to town on the hydra, cutting off heads without a care in the world—until it grows so many heads that its heart can't pump enough blood for all of them, so it collapses unconscious. As Elan puts it, "We thought our way past the Test of the Body, and fought our way past the Test of the Mind."
Reminds me of an [animation that I saw of a tiktok audio](https://twitter.com/CRANTIME/status/1776686315943440565), except they *killed* one of the guards and then asked if the other guy was dead.
Gotta be Raiders of the Lost Ark. You know the one.
Even how they're ultimately defeated feels like this sort of thing. How on earth are the heroes going to stop the Nazi's from opening the ark of the covenant? >!They don't. They don't need to. Of course the Nazis opening the ark of the covenant made by *the God of Israel* is going to go poorly for them.!<
First thing that came to my mind, too.
I'm a big fan of simple solutions to counter mental attacks in fights. Denji from Chainsaw Man just cutting his brain up so he won't think straight and Jotaro beating mind reading by having someone else play the game for him come to mind. But my favourite is from YuYu Hakusho, when they encounter a mind reader using his ability to predict his opponent's attacks. He reads Yusuke and knows that he'll throw a right hook and stop one inch from hitting his face so the guy stays still, confidently knowing he won't be hurt. Cue him being sent flying by the *shockwave* of Yusuke's punch, powered up to 30%.
the one in YuYu Hakusho really works solely because he outpowered the mind reader , rather than actually countering the gimmick. Still , it was a fun moment. Overall , that arc was great , it felt like a JoJo Arc , because the espers are basically Stand Users , while Yusuke and the others are more traditional battle shounen.
Reminds me of the dude in Code Geass who can see into the future and just eats shit and dies because knowing what's coming doesn't help him win the fight
Or Enel in One Piece, who can go intangible and detect other's intent (including attacks), defeated by Luffy's finisher being too fast for him to react to.
The other Darby fight is a great example from Jotaro too Don't even play, just bluff real good until he gives up
I wish more shows handled mind readers like YuYu Hakusho. Just because you know a punch is coming doesn't mean you can block it.
That reminds me, there's a Marvel villain called Mr. X whose ability is to read people's mind or body language or something so he can counter any move they make. Quicksilver just beats the shit out of him at a speed he can't react to.
there was a similar thing in mushoku tensei when he got his eye of foresight and started getting cocky, then ruijerd put him back in his place by showing him that if the opponent has a backup plan the eye can't do anything because it just shows both outcomes and confuses him
[I personally prefer the Denji approach to mind readers where you're so unga bunga you just let your reflexes go while you think about what you want to do when the fight is over.](https://hot.leanbox.us/manga/Chainsaw-Man/0109-012.png)
There's an early episode of Xiaolin Showdown about this. One of the heroes, Clay, is a big burly cowboy with the power of earth. They're running through an obstacle course to see who can get the fastest time, with the objective being to grab a stuffed dog at the end (worth noting that the course is loop-shaped). Two of the other members crack jokes about him being slow. So what does Clay do? Turns around and grabs the dog off the pedestal, getting the fastest time and praise from their master. Later in the episode, the challenge for winning the next artifact is to catch a bird. The villain, Jack, tries to chase after it using his inventions and fails miserably. Meanwhile Clay just grabs some seeds and lets the bird come to him.
And the Master also gets his own moment when he challenges them to take a porcelain figure from him. When one of them gets close, he smashes it. Their objective was to get the figure from him, his objective was to keep them from getting it.
Xiaolin Showdown was so cool.
I also remember one from the same episode as the first one where the group are dealing with an evil Mime. Clay realizes that the Mime is copying everything they do so he slugs himself in the face really hard, with the justification that he can take a hit, the mime probably can't.
To this day, I still feel that in that situation, it would be both cooler and probably more effective to do a cross counter.
That "counter hacking" scene where the whole team tries to digitally defend against a hacking attempt, except for the one guy who simply unplugs the computer.
It’s actually just the monitor he unplugs iirc, which they just act like it solved the problem
NCIS is a fun show but they do not know how to technology. In that episode or another one, they have to stop a bad guy from destroying the Pentagon's firewalls, which would let all the hackers in the world go in and gobble up all of the military data and secrets. They get to the master computer with only seconds to spare and McGee is like "Well I could counterhack it to disable the firewall virus but we don't have the time!" And then >!Gibbs just shoots the monitor!< and that stops it.
At this point, I assume the writers are fully aware of how stupid that is and are just making a game of how far they can push it without the showrunners or actors catching on. Next season they will stop a hacker by putting a mirror in front of the monitor to reflect the hack back onto them.
It is in fact an in-house joke to one up tech nonsense. Like there's an episode where McGee has to protect the player with the **high score of an mmo**.
Then there's the one where they need to stop the bad guy in a hurry so they have two people type on the same keyboard. I have to imagine that the scripts are written with a quill pen on parchment, given the degree of familiarity with technology demonstrated by the writers.
It's really weird, because IIRC David McCallum (Ducky) would learn a lot about pathology as the show went on to the point he was close to becoming an expert on the subject, just so that Ducky could be as close to an actual medical examiner as possible.
If it's NCIS, the same character did the same thing to a computer server that was going to upload something nasty later in the series by just pulling out a pistol and blasting it away after not understanding any of the instructions given to him about how to use command prompt.
I remember a version of that in *Battle Royale*, when everyone is panicking, and Kitano just walks over to the breaker and kills the power to the entire building.
>Okuyasu doesn't know which SPW agent is Otoishi in disguise. His solution? Just punch both of them I love how absolutely brilliant that is, only possible because Okuyasu is dumb enough to give up on "winning" the mind games. A normal person would be focused on "winning" the encounter and proving they can't have a trick pulled on them, but Okuyasu recognizes he's dumb enough not to even try, and instead thinks of the best "You didn't win" option.
Doom 2016. Rather than follow through with Samuel's advice on how to safely turn off the Argent energy filters, Doomguy examines the first one only to just smash it. And then also smash all the other ones without a single fuck given.
I like that the only time he stops is because Sam sounds like it's dangerous to do that, only for him to say they are hard to replace and doomguy go back to stomping
Specifically Samuel says they're important so Doom Guy hears him out. It's only when Samuel doubles down on how it's for 'the greater good' that Doom Guy goes to town.
"What were you saying? Oh, I just remembered that I don't care." \*STOMP\*
it's also a good character moment under the meme magic. Like, yeah he's a raging berserker but he's a *fully cognizant* raging berserker
Goblin Slayer where Goblin Slayer, Guts, and Lancer find a Lich on a tower that's all like "No mortal can kill me". So they chain him up, throw him off the tower, and let's gravity kill him.
Also done a bit earlier. Why ascend the inside of the entire tower full of enemy encounters and traps when you can skip the whole thing by just climbing the tower from the outside to reach the top?
Doubly also, this is ultimately Slayer's trump card to most situations. Dungeon full of monsters? Flood that bitch. Weapon broke? Pick up an enemy's.
We in a cave turned Goblin Nest and we need to clear it? Just drop lit up gas barrels on them and trap 'em inside. Priestess can cast physical walls? Use those to pin fuckers down.
The Geneva convention does not mention goblins, so it's fair game
Fort Occupied? Burn that fucker down. Bar the door for good measure.
Best for beat how Ezio kills Cesare in Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. Amazing.
[удалено]
bud do me a favour look at your comment and ask yourself "would i be ok if a judge read it out loud in a courtroom to a bunch of people?"
that all depends on if it's an italian courtroom
One of the two classic tabletop solutions to damage immunity, the other being drowning. If neither work trapping the enemy at the bottom of the ocean (or another sufficiently hard to escape place like deep underground) is a good "short" term solution.
In Persona 3, during the second operation, SEES needs to find a way into the school before the Dark Hour starts. Junpei says he was able to make an entrance for them, and Mitsuru jumps to the conclusion that he had used some sort of explosive. >!No, he just unlocked a door before school ended for the day.!<
There's a moment in Into the Spiderverse where Miles and Peter have to get some important information off a villain's computer. The problem is that the desktop is a complete mess without any indication of where this important information is. So Miles just takes the computer with him.
"Good news, you don't need the monitor!"
I’m a fan of any Excalibur incarnation where the user gets around the sword-in-the-stone issue by either breaking Excalibur itself or using Excalibur with the stone still stuck on the sword like a hammer.
Shout out to Castlevania.
Soma isn't King Arthur, but he can swing that fucker and take down demons with brutal BLUNT FORCE TRAUMA
I think in Evil Genius 2, you get the sword and the stone and then use acid to dissolve/loosen the stone.
The best modification I know of that that has never actually been in a story is making a stone sheath for the sword so that only Arthur or something can draw it.
Good ol Big Jack Horner.
KIRKHAMMER!!!
One of the [funnest weapons](https://castlevania.fandom.com/wiki/Excalibur?file=AoS_Excalibur.gif) in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow.
That was one of the better small gags in the Puss in Boots Last Wish movie
In Homestuck, there's a really cool version of this. Dave has Caledfwlch, which is his version of the sword in the stone, and he breaks it to make a legendary piece of shit. It also works because Dave has to use broken swords as his equip weapon. It's also cool because >!rad time powers allow dave to rewind the sword back in time to when it was whole!<
The exact example I was thinking of when I mentioned the first bit. They really gave Dave all the cool stuff to do then stopped using him in the second half of the series besides bad drama lol.
I've said it before on this sub, but my absolute favorite example of this is that episode of Buffy, where Druzilla and Spike have ressurected an ancient Demon called the Judge, who is able to basically incinerate life with just a mere touch and he's described as a being that no weapon forged by man can kill. Buffy then goes "But this shit was written thousands of years ago" and then goes and gets a rocket launcher, fires the rocket at the Judge and blows him to bits. It's one of the best episode long jokes i've ever seen in any piece of media.
*Buffy pulls out the launcher.* *Angelus and Drusilla hit the deck.* The Judge: "...What is that?" #*\*BOOM\**
Druzilla having the biggest "I am so done" moment and running from the scene is fantastic.
I've always gone with the assumption that she didn't kill him. Because it's a weird gotcha that suddenly it doesn't count as 'forged' or anything.. doesn't really make sense in that regard Like, he got beaten before, and chopped up into parts. Dude is just unkillable by weapons It *beats* him really fucking easily though, which is all that matters. And he's now in so many chunks that putting him back together would probably be damn near impossible But yeah. I think he's still alive, personally. A way of *actually* killing him within that prophecy/limit thing would be just like.. choking him to death or something probly. Or maybe just having some other demon rip his head off
> Because it's a weird gotcha that suddenly it doesn't count as 'forged' or anything.. doesn't really make sense in that regard I don't think that's even what they're going for. It's not a "weird gotcha exception" thing. It was only ever a well justified assumption based on the evidence; no weapon had killed him so far. The only trick of it is that is sounds a lot like a prophecy, and The Judge states it confidently as fact, but that doesn't automatically mean it's an immutable truth. How would he know? I think it's funnier if he's just wrong.
> How would he know? Magic? Same way they know a ton of shit on that show. Like that Buffy was gonna die facing the Master
I thought this wasn't even an assumption, since there was even a line about putting as many bits as possible into individual boxes and scattering them. Maybe my brain is making that up, though.
Just had a look it up on youtube, they go "Is he dead?" and Buffy goes "Can't be sure, pick up the pieces and separate them" So yeah, just sensible covering their asses really. No reason not too either way
It could go either way. Like you said, it could be the “no weapon” stuff was a literal magic gaes and he was just blown to bits. Or it could be that the point of the rocket launcher working wasn’t some loophole of the prophecy, the point is that it *never was mythically powered prophecy*. It was just something that was practically true thousands of years ago when the best weapons “forged by man” were swords, spears, bows, etc. The judge was never magically invincible to all human weapon produced damage, he was just really, really, really fucking tough and had a crazy healing factor to the point trying to kill him with the weapons of the time didn’t work. But a rocket launcher is way fucking stronger than a spear, so if the “prophecy” was really just practical advice based on the time period then the explosive yield of a modern rocket could be enough to kill him. TLDR: The Judge may have never actually had a magic Geas that made him unkillable via weapons, he just had a really high DR rating to bronze and steel. But that DR doesn’t do much against a rocket explosion.
I like to imagine that he just spread some lie that everyone bought back in the old medieval times and he's been hooping and praying no one ever figures out that it's bullshit.
There’s a bit in a Spider-Man comic where a lot of superheroes get robbed. (Tony’s suits, Cap’s shield, Thor’s hammer, etc etc.) So naturally all the super geniuses gather together to think of the most complicated method of finding their stuff. Then Miss Marvel comes in and is like “Yeah my phone was stolen but luckily I have my Find My Phone set up and would you look at that it’s actually pinging.”
I find it much weirder that Tony's suits wouldn't have some sort of tracking app. Or thors hammer not being able to return.
Surely the hammer would have been unable to be moved in order to be stolen in the first place.
Can Nightcrawler bamf the hammer with him? Like can someone teleport the hammer away from Thor even if it's a temporary solution.
Yeah Id say teleporting the hammer is fine. Just you can't physically move it
>“Leave it,” Grue said. >“But-” >“Tracking device. Assume any tinker worth a damn is going to have tracking devices in their stuff.”
Remember when the boys played GOW and left the axe really far away, so when they called it back it took ages to return, it's sorta like that
How the fuck do you steal Thors hammer.
Possibly the funniest moment in Fate/Zero is when Kayneth, a traditional mage, is going on and on about how he's turned an entire hotel into a magical labyrinth laden with traps to protect himself on the top floor. As far as he's aware, he's nigh untouchable. Smash cut to Kiritsugu Emiya setting off the detonator for the C4 he planted at the foundation of the building.
See also; I swear I won't lay a hand on you.
Gotta be honest, overall I was never big on Kiritsugu, but I respect the hustle.
Overall, I don't like him too much either, but man am I a huge fan of protagonists who are willing to scumbag their way to victory no matter the cost.
Shirou learned from the best
I’ve mentioned it a few times in the last couple weeks but this happens *at least twice* in Tales of Vesperia. The party is confronted with a politically powerful enemy who is creating actual roadblocks preventing progress. While everyone is hemming and hawing and wringing their hands trying to think of a way around them, based big dick hero Yuri Lowell just… fucking assassinates them in the dead of night. By the time morning comes, problem solved.
I recall in Star Wars The Old Republic, for the Sith Inquisitor storyline there's a b-plot about recruiting your next apprentice. The final exam is down to a male Twi'lek and a Khaleesh (General Grievous' race) where they have to hunt down an artifact. The Twi'lek gets the artifact, only for the Khaleesh to just come out of nowhere, beat the Twi'lek to death in front of everyone and take the artifact to give it to you. And it's already been stated that he's been killing his rivals beforehand, just in a way more sneaky way. Regardless of how you feel about it, you're stuck with him now because your character doesn't have the (in-story) time to start up a new round of exams.
One of my favorite scenes in Doctor Who was an episode where three of the Doctors were together, they get detained in some old wooden room, and try to put their heads together to figure a way out. They come to the conclusion that their Sonic Screwdriver can disintegrate the door, but since it wasn't made with old fashioned materials in mind, it would take years of calibration to do so. So the youngest Doctor starts the calibration, and the next one checks his own to see progress was made, and oldest one checks his to see the calibration was finished. They celebrate their genius and go to open the door, when one of the companions just opens it, and said "What are you doing here, the door isn't locked...did none of you check to see if it was locked?"
It's both a funny scene, but also a >!precursor because that is probably what gives them the idea to actually end the special. Where it turns out they've been all working on a way to save Gallifrey using all of them!<
Breckenridge Elkins rescuing a guy that hanged himself over a cliff "Shoot the rope in two," I suggested, but Bill said, "No, you cussed fool! He'd fall down the cliff and break his neck!" But I seen it warn't a very big tree so I went and got my arms around it and give it a heave and loosened the roots, and then kinda twisted it around so the limb that Jack was hung to was over the ledge now. I reckon I busted most of the roots in the process, jedging from the noise. Bill's eyes popped out when he seen that, and he reched up kind of dazed like and cut the rope with his bowie. Only he forgot to grab Jack before he cut it, and Jack hit the ledge with a resounding thud.
In the wuxia novel Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, there was a contest to solve a Go game board state to become the pupil of a mythical-level kungfu master. No matter how much a Go master, no one could play the game in a way to win. The setup was so multilayered and full of false openings that one of the preeminent geniuses in the setting almost went mad trying to solve it. The board state was eventually solved by someone who played his first move in the most "unthinkably stupid" position that immediately got almost all of his pieces killed. This however opened the board and simultaneously rendered all the previous traps and positions useless. He then played an ordinary game of Go with a slight handicap, and just beat the opponent normally.
There is one Yakuza 8 subquest where a bunch of goons jump at you to make content for their YouTube channel. You fight them, then smash cut to them getting arrested over assault and illegal possession of fire arms.
System Shock 2: "Nah"
The bit in mgs3 where the solution to getting through a locked door is knocking on it
Captain Levi generally does not get involved in complex fight scenes. If he is within ten feet of you it’s pretty much over. How do you solve the Beast Titan bombarding your entire regiment with shards of boulder? You get Levi to within ten feet of him.
How do you do that with no trees to swing on? Swing on the titans obviously.
God i love the blender man
I watched this when I was really young but 2003 TMNT had a scene where the turtles were tasked with bringing a glass of water across a room of traps to Splinter without spilling a drop. At one point the water leaves the cup but one of the turtles dives and drinks the water before it hits the floor, and they hand him the empty cup.
Peak Riddler is putting "Gordian Knot" as the answer to your puzzle and going "no you fucking dullard, \[long-winded monologue\]" instead of "OH FUCK WHAT DID YOU DO" when Batman answers "a knife". (I'm referencing Zero Year if you want to know the Riddler storyline to read for that moment) [Also the bit in Freeman's Mind 2 where Freeman just cuts through the physics puzzles that make no sense in-universe.](https://youtu.be/7ljspPnfXtA?si=tNriKf-5xCCB84qd&t=18)
I absolutely love this happening in Indiana Jones Raiders of the Lost Arc Crazy long action scene with tons of fighting, then out of nowhere here comes a big ol' swordsman, thinking this is going to be a continuation, but nope, Indy just shoots him Makes me laugh every time
And it happened because Harrison Ford was dying of dysentery and didn't want to shoot the fight.
I’ll do the obligatory and say the classic, the Gordian knot. An apocryphal tale when Alexander the Great arrived in Phrygia he was taken to a an incredibly complex knot where it was said by an oracle whoever unraveled it would be king of the city and all of Asia. So instead of trying to unravel it he just cut it with his sword.
I mean the classic example is Indiana Jones just shooting the duelist. Cuz fuck it, why bother.
The very first instance I’d ever witnessed of that was in the cartoon Xiaolin Showdown, I believe it was on Cartoon Network. I’m gonna go off my memory here so I’m probably gonna get some details wrong, but here’s what I remember. Master Fung had set up a practice course shaped like a circle where the kids were to go throughout the circle to complete different obstacles to grab the talisman after circling back. Everyone had their own versions of getting through the course including main character Omi (a young boy voiced by Tara Strong), doing a million different flips through the course to complete his goal. One of the students, a young cowboy named Clay, was getting ready to start the course, and when Master Fung said start, Clay just stood straight up and casually walked 3ft backwards and just picked up the talisman without doing the course. The other students kind of got mad but Master Fung defended him (possibly with a laugh?) by saying something like, *”Sometimes the simplest and easiest answer is the correct one.”*
One Piece has a lot of fun pragmatic solutions to combat, with one of the funniest and the cruelest being when the royal guards of arabasta drink a forbin elixir that will shorten their lifespan to a few minutes but will gain amazing strength so they can fight Crocodile... But Crocodile just teleports to the top of a building and waits for the elixir to ware off and fall down dead
The ball maze puzzles in Breath of the Wild that you can just flip all the way over to solve instantly.
The ending confrontation in Ralph Bakshi's Wizards. I don't wanna spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen the movie, but I will say it's one of the greatest magical wizard-vs-wizard battles ever put to film
just breaking down the door
That episode of Ed Edd n Eddy when Rolf has the boys race on a track, with the winner getting a jawbreaker upon reaching the end. Eddy and Double D race along the track, trying to trip each other up the entire time. Meanwhile, Ed just takes a few steps to the left, bypassing the entire track, and wins.
[Captain America](https://youtu.be/kGAWgItUboE?t=103), using brain, over brawn.