Cutting the Knot in Fan Works.
Crossovers
- Child of the Storm has Harry develop a proclivity for solving problems by blowing them up, blowing them up again, then setting the rubble on fire. This is not because he can't come up with more cunning solutions - he's a highly capable Guile Hero, temper notwithstanding - it's just that he prefers explosions. As he loftily puts it, they make an impression. For instance, rather than sneaking through a HYDRA base backed up by his friends, having been teleported in by Doctor Strange to try and find Tony, Steve, and Bruce (all imprisoned), his response is to blast a trail of destruction through the entire base until he gets to them - though, granted, he was in a very bad mood at the time.
- In the sequel, Dracula gets around the problem about how he Must Be Invited to get into Avengers Mansion by telekinetically ripping it out of the ground and into three separate pieces.
- Code Geass: Paladins of Voltron: The minute Allura tries to bring up the similarities between herself and Lelouch, he simply uses his Geass to learn what, exactly, she's talking about.
- Code Grid: Discussed in New Allies, New Enemies — Ulrich suggests that since they now have access to the Grid, they could move operations there and shut down XANA. However, Jeremie points out that Keeva's laptop, which houses the Grid 4.0, likely doesn't have the software or hardware necessary to run the "Return to the Past" function, meaning they wouldn't be able to erase the impact of XANA's attacks anymore.
- A Dead World: Alex Mercer is ordered to find some way of proving to the King that Pacer started the fight with the NCR. When Pacer catches him snooping around, Mercer just picks him up by the neck and takes him to the king.
- Family Bonding And Other Perilous Pursuits: After realizing that the Waynes are Related in the Adaptation to the Fentons, Bruce and Tim try to figure out some way of subtly determining whether or not Jack and his family are aware of their connection. Damian just calls Danny and asks him some questions.
- Fate Revelation Online: Ilya has mind-control magic. It's only minimally useful against monsters, but NPCs almost never have any resistance. So she uses it to skip all NPC dialogue and anything else that might slow her. Especially since, due to the game's attention to detail, the NPC usually has the final quest reward in their inventory. So she'll order them to give it to her, and then end of quest will play out as if she had spent hours doing the quest normally."That's how you do [Quests], huh." Kirito dryly commented.
"Oho ho ho!" Ilya did that fake noblewoman laugh she liked to do before responding. "Yes! I'm proud to say that I've never once had to listen all the way to the end of a dialogue!"
Silica wasn't so sure that Ilya should be proud of that. - A Game of Cat and Cat: Discussed. While the Belmont family generally encourages this approach, Julius Belmont discourages his apprentices from trying these during tests because they can interfere with his ability to assess them. For example, one test was basically a game of keep-away with a stopwatch, and one apprentice hid the stopwatch in a wall instead of keeping it on her person. It worked, but Julius made her retake the test because he couldn't time her properly.Julius: And before you think of any clever solutions, keep in mind that this is a test of your skill, not of your ability to find loopholes.
- In Holding Back the Sea, seeing that his Master Kariya is dying and could meet his end while the Grail War is still taking place, Berserker decides to go to Matou Manor, kills Zouken, floods the worm-infested basement and abducts Sakura, fulfilling Kariya's wish in less than an hour without the sacrifice of multiple Servants.
- Justice League of Equestria:
- Mare of Steel: With only moments to stop a bomb Brainiac has planted in Cloudsdale and unable to think of anything else to do, Rainbow Dash/Supermare punches it, which destroys its firing mechanism. She's as surprised as anyone that it actually worked.
- The Princess of Themyscira: Diana does this literally during the tournament to select an ambassador to the mortal realm as part of an intelligence test — her mother said to undo the knotted rope, not untie it.
- In a Call-Back, this is also how she deals with Ares' master plan (using the Alicorn Amulet to open a portal to Tartarus and releasing the demons there) — she can't get close enough to the Amulet to remove it, and even if she could, she's not a unicorn and can't use it. So, she ends up throwing her tiara at it to destroy it, sealing the portal with Ares inside it.
- Monsters In Paradise: An Eevee who is staying with Reisen at Eientei has its thoughts wander towards its impending evolution. Since it doesn't know Reisen very well and doesn't have a strong bond with her, it can't evolve into Umbreon, and its thoughts reveal that its parents weren't clear with it on that subject anyway. Eevee gets around this issue by deliberately biting Reisen while they're moongazing, jump-starting its evolution with Reisen's wave manipulation abilities.
- In My Copy
, Lilith is bound by the Chains of Cyttorak but gets free by simply ripping the unbreakable chains out of the much more fragile concrete wall. - In Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!, Izuku is stuck floating uselessly in an anti-gravity chamber at USJ while the rest of the villains are attacking his classmates outside. After getting fed up with the situation and failing to get his flight to work in such a space, he apologizes to Thirteen before cutting the entire chamber in half with his Heat Vision, disabling the anti-gravity to get free.
- A Shadow of the Titans:
- Jade, forced to attend the HIVE, is presented with the task of traversing Death Trap-ridden obstacle course and ringing a bell during a Physical Feats class. Upon noticing that the course is circular, she just turns around and rings the bell that's a few feet behind her.HIVE student: Can she do that?
- As "Star Chan" Jade does this again later, during a fight with Evil Dick, who has just activated a Doomsday Device. No one can get past its force field or hack it in time to shut it down... and then Jade notes it's literally plugged into a power source. She pulls the plug, shutting the machine down and ending the problem immediately.
- Jade, forced to attend the HIVE, is presented with the task of traversing Death Trap-ridden obstacle course and ringing a bell during a Physical Feats class. Upon noticing that the course is circular, she just turns around and rings the bell that's a few feet behind her.
- Twice now in Thieves Can Be Heroes!:
- The Phantom Thieves are wondering how they're ever going to cart out Kamoshida's Treasure, which is a massive crown as large as they are and several times as heavy. Cue Izuku pointing out that they could use their superhumanly large and strong Personas to do the heavy-lifting for them, particularly his own physically-inclined Persona, Carter. The rest of the Thieves all Facepalm for not thinking of that solution sooner.
- Unlike in Persona 5, Madarame arrives home early before Morgana has finished picking the lock. Ann bites the lock off thanks to her Quirk.
- In The Stalking Zuko Series, Aang gets some of his friends to participate in an Air Nomad festival that involves various games, even though no one else is at all enthusiastic about it. During the week, Suki and Zuko, faced with a puzzle box as part of a challenge, stomp on the box, breaking it open and getting their marble. They also glue together the pieces of another puzzle rather than try to balance the pieces.
- Blackened Skies: When faced with a locked box, Mondo opens it by kicking the lock hard enough to send it flying across the room.
- The match between Darth Maul vs General Grievous ends this way with the former breaking open a viewport on the Cool Starship they're fighting on, leading to both of them getting sucked into space. Grievous' cyborg body lets him survive; Maul isn't so lucky.
- The same writer came with a similar reason as part of Booker Dewitt's victory in Jack vs Booker, with him using the Bucking Bronco vigor to suspend Jack in midair before killing him with a Hand Cannon. The writer notes that Booker had a number of ways he could easily end the fight, which is part of why he won.
- The same writer came with a similar reason as part of Booker Dewitt's victory in Jack vs Booker
- Since a lot of events center around Sephiroth, a time-travelling Cloud tries to kill Sephiroth to prevent them from happening in the The Fifth Act.If he was going to change things, there was a person who needed to die.
- At the end when both Cloud and Sephiroth are paralyzed by Jenova, Genesis shows up and impatiently fires off a few Fires, roasting Jenova."Honestly. I'm not sure what I missed, but it wasn't even a moving target."
- At the end when both Cloud and Sephiroth are paralyzed by Jenova, Genesis shows up and impatiently fires off a few Fires, roasting Jenova.
- Final Fantasy VII: Another Side: When imprisoned in the Shinra tower, Zack is manacled to the wall with electronically controlled shackles. When the time comes to escape, Cissnei is all set to try some complicated hacking scheme to open them, then Kunsel comes in and sticks his sword into an electrical circuit, shorting out the manacles, which fall open.
- In Off the Line: Cloud uses a genderbending magic necklace to hide from bounty hunters. Bounty hunter try to get around this by killing any Viera woman they find because one of them is bound to be Cloud, right? Instead Vieras are getting together to kill bands of bounty hunter to protect themselves.
- Edward in My Master Ed starts to plan out how to get Hohenheim away from the Dwarf in the Flask and worries about how to not get caught kidnapping him when Edward remembers his father is a slave right now, and it'd be a lot easier if he just bought him.
- This trope is Quirrell's default mode of action in Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Whenever he is faced with a physical obstacle, he solves the problem either with Killing Curse or Fiendfyre. He can be extremely cunning when he needs to be, but he will generally choose the simplest possible solution.
- In Mr & Mr PotterMalfoy and the Treasure Hunt of Doom Harry and Draco's sons set up a Knights and Knaves situation as part of the treasure hunt they designed. Instead of figuring out the right question to ask the appropriate statue, Draco blows the leg off one of them.Left statue: Aaaagh! He blew my leg off! The crazy git blew my leg off!
Right statue: He didn't blow your leg off and I totally saw it coming!
- The New Adventures of Invader Zim: In Season 2 Episode 11, the first challenge in the Invaders' tournament is for the Invaders to run a U-shaped obstacle course. After confirming that the only rule is to reach the finish line first to win, Zim just hops to it from the side containing the starting line.
- In Queen of All Oni, when Left is faced with a giant stone barrier supposedly impervious to magic in his and Right's attempt to rescue Jade, he (being a bit of a Mad Bomber) just blows it up with dynamite.
- Syngenesophobia: Discussed when Lynn asks Lisa if she could build a time machine in order to prevent the incident that drove such a massive wedge into their family from happening in the first place. Lisa admits that she did consider this, but points out to Lynn that all of her equipment was taken away as part of their punishment... plus, she's afraid of making matters worse. Lynn then suggests that she should try wiping Lincoln's memories; however, Lisa retorts that in order to make that work, she's have to erase the memories of everyone else who knew what happened... and any tampering with memories runs the risk of making the recipient revert back to the mind of a toddler.Lynn: So... this is the only way, huh? No shortcuts...?
Lisa: Afraid so.
- The Mandela Magazine: N is a flawed Alternate whose only discernable feature is his eyes. The person confronting him simply pokes both of his eyes with their fingers, prompting N to react with understandable confusion and agony.
- After stealing the power stone in Balance, Ebony Maw uses it to blast the Nova Corps headquarters and all of their ships into rubble rather than engage in conventional warfare to steal the time stone from Doctor Strange.
- The Karma of Lies: While dealing with a succession of reakumatized victims, Ladybug, Viperion and Kitsune are faced with a problem when Dark Owl shows up, as Dark Owl hid his akumatized object somewhere. While Viperion's Second Chance helps them figure out where his akumatized object is hidden, there's no way for them to reach the building in question within the five-minute window of his rewinds. Ladybug is forced to cut the knot by authorizing a missile strike on the place, without knowing whether or not there's any innocent civilians inside. This haunts Ladybug; while she knows the Miraculous Cure can bring any casualties Back from the Dead, she'll only be able to cast it if they win... and that doesn't erase the horror she feels at having to make such a harsh call.
- Scarlet Lady: Canonically, the objects summoned by Ladybug's Lucky Charm may seem mundane or ill-suited to the situation at hand, but they can usually be used to defeat the latest Akuma. The few exceptions are those which instead signal to Ladybug that she needs to go consult the Guardian or otherwise procure help from a temporary hero. Since Chloe has the Ladybug Earrings here, however, and has little interest in puzzling out some clever solution... so this typically translates to her or Chat Noir using the Lucky Charm to bean the Akuma in the head.
- Mean Rabbit: How was Hagakure able to pass the Entrance Exam without an offense-oriented Quirk? Simple: the robots had off switches. All she had to do was sneak up and turn them off.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- ARTICLE 2: Shane is being tested for intelligence and is challenged to retrieve what is in a glass box. There are several keys to try, but he discovers the lock shocks him when he touches it. He looks around the room and finds an oven mitt. The testers expect him to use it to protect his hand from the shock so he can safely test the keys, but he instead uses it to protect his hand so he can punch through the glass.
- Defied in Bitterness; Spike asks Cadence to use her love spell to help restore Twilight's affection for her friends. However, Cadence explains that her magic only works when somebody wants to be loved by another — since she currently wants nothing to do with any of them, there's nothing for Cadence to work with.
- A Diplomatic Visit: Discussed in chapter 19 when Celestia recalls to herself when she's had advisors who suggested she do this via removing the officials who would stand in her way. She also recalls that she explicitly refused to do so and dismissed any advisor who suggested it, on the grounds that it would be the act of a tyrant and a dictator seeking to consolidate power, and she is neither.
- A Gem of a Day: While chasing Sunset, Twilight and Pinkie through a warehouse, the chimera gets annoyed and starts knocking down all the shelves, eliminating all of their hiding places. Pinkie then complains that it cheated at Hide and Seek.
- The Great Alicorn Hunt: Rather than figuring out what kind of Secret Test of Character must be passed in order to open the box recovered from the Tree of Harmony, Princess Celestia simply gives it to Daring Do, noting that she has a history of being able to jimmy these things open.
- The Immortal Game: During the Battle of the Everfree, Twilight Sparkle announces that the Mane Six need to get into Titan's Citadel in order to stop him. When Rainbow Dash asks her if she's going to use a spell to create an opening, Twilight responds by blasting a hole in the side of the building.
- In New Beginnings, several knots get sliced and diced. A few standouts:
- Twilight wants to recover the Element of Magic by winning the Fall Formal. Page just waits till nightfall and then steals it.
- In Complications, Ch 23, rather than fight the Storm King and his Mooks, Page combines a sleep spell with Luna's raw magical power and puts everybody in Canterlot to sleep.
- A Witch In Broad Daylight: Trixie keeps her collection of Twilight's possessions locked behind a magically sealed door with a nigh-indestructible arcanium bolt. So how does Twilight recover her things? Simple: she melts a hole straight through the wall.
- Chiaroscuro: Since Kimimaro's bones are strong enough to withstand regular attacks, the Akatsuki deal with him via genjutsu, immobilizing him with an illusion before strangling him to death.
- Gender Confusion: After learning that the rest of the Akatsuki are having trouble figuring out whether they identifies as male or female, Deidara decides to make it as ambiguous as possible, wanting them to figure out the truth on their own. Hidan instead solves the problem by asking Jashin, while Zetsu steals Deidara's birth certificate from Iwa.
- Naruto lampshades the idea in Myoushuu no Fuuin with the idea of puzzle boxes, citing that only the rich use the things as anyone who tried it in the Red Light District would find it stolen or smashed open in seconds. During the first part of the Chunin Exams, applicants are discouraged from breaking open their puzzle boxes due to the massive point loss that'd come from doing so.
- The Somewhat Cracked Mind Of Uchiha Itachi: Rather than destroying all of Kakuzu's hearts, Shikamaru orders Hinata to attack the Akatsuki's brain, noting that he's only got one of those. After Kakuzu falls, Sasuke then stabs him in the head a few times just to make absolutely certain that he won't be getting up again.
- Son of the Sannin: Naruto's entire generation of Genin was spared the pain of having to catch Tora the cat since Tamaki can just summon her no matter where she is. Team Tenzo doesn't have this luxury, since Tamaki has been promoted to Chunin and no longer has to go on D-rank missions by the time they became Genin.
- Crimson AU:
- Lala notes that people tend to make things much more complicated than they need to be, and advises Akira that when it comes to relationships, being honest is almost always the way to go.
- Ann eventually asks Akira if they can just tell Makoto and Haru who the Phantom Thieves are — mostly because Akira has been spending so much time sneaking around and doing everything he can to prevent them from figuring out their secret identities that the team hasn't been able to actually do any Phantom Thievery for a while.
- Ancienverse: When Zinnia unleashes a horde of Dragon-type pokémon, the heroes counter her plan not by attacking them directly, but by targeting the meteorites they're summoning.
- Chosen One's Adventure with Legendaries: The podiums at the Viridian City Gym are rigged to shock the trainers whenever their pokémon take damage. Latias attempts to hack the system despite not having a computer; however, Giratina shuts the system down by sending its power source into the Reverse World.
- In Persephone's Waltz, Homura gives up on trying to reason with Madoka to keep her from making a wish with Kyubey and just kidnaps her.
- Arcanum: One of the trials that the White has potential initiates undergo to prove themselves is finding their way out of an illusionary room. Pyrrha successfully solves the Moon Logic Puzzle in the intended fashion, while Ruby simply locates the enchanted object that's powering the illusion and destroys it.
- Revan in So Not My Problem is a Comically Invincible Hero with a proclivity towards the Jedi Mind Trick. When asked to solve a murder case where both witnesses claim the other did it, he Force Persuades them into telling the truth to avoid wasting time cross-examining their statements.
- With This Ring: Comes up with OL around.
- When the team are fighting Mister Twister and come to the conclusion that it's Red Tornado in disguise, OL uses his ring to confirm Red Tornado's location: in the base.
- OL and the Team were fighting Ocean Master while he's holding Queen Mera hostage. OL's constructs don't work on Ocean Master due to his armor's magical nature. What does he do? Cut off Ocean Master's hands which were the only things that weren't protected.
