Basic Trope: Video game developers account for unlikely occurrences in their game.
- Straight: In the game Operation T.R.O.P.E: Infiltration, Marcy and Jordan enter a military stronghold, where they must hack the control room and disable a nuclear weapon. You play as both, but Jordan, the brains, is scripted to sneak into the security room. If you glitch and exploit the game it's possible to instead have Marcy there, a special cutscene plays where Jordan is instead instructing her on what to do, she gets extremely frustrated and shoots up the control room, somehow disabling the nuclear missile. Jordan’s response, “Yeah that works.”
- Exaggerated:
- It is literally and virtually impossible to even have Marcy in the room because she isn’t selectable until late-game. But by hacking the game you can unlock her early, and the entire mission plays differently to account for her presence, as if it was intended.
- Marcy's load out and current health are accounted for in her actions destroying the control room. If she is out of pistol ammo but has enough health to survive some splash damage she uses explosives. If she is out of both but in good health she will punch everything to break it and hurt herself that way. If she would risk dying in either other case she either drops her weapon early on in her outburst or stops after banging her knuckles on the monitor. Either way she is left tired enough that she calms down by the time she catches her breath and actually follows Jordan's instructions.
- Downplayed: Jordan or Marcy are both in the computer room, and if you try to make her hack the computer, he questions why Marcy is trying to hack a computer, and suggests he do it instead.
- Justified:
- The game’s selling point is being able to do anything out of the ordinary, and have the game account for it.
- The sequence, cutscene, and appropriate triggers were left in the game's code since Marcy was planned to be playable in the Control Room, and the developers forgot to remove it.
- The dev team's trademark is accounting for absolutely anything a given player could do, up to and including situations that would have become Unintentionally Unwinnable if another developer made the game. The described scenario is a good demonstration of their incredible foresight.
- Inverted: Jordan is supposed to hack the computer. For some reason, the game bugs out as if the developers did not account for the player completing the mission as instructed.
- Subverted: Marcy enters the computer room via exploits and glitches, then the game plays the normal scene where Jordan hacks the computer.
- Double Subverted: ... by later in the game, Marcy accuses Jordan of sidelining her “Like last time, in the computer room”.
- Parodied: Marcy enters the computer room via cheats, then Dr. Despicable breaks the fourth wall mocking you, the player, for thinking they are clever, then makes you fight a comically overpowered boss.
- Zig Zagged: Sometimes the game accounts for unlikely occurrences, other times it folds or proceeds like nothing happened.
- Averted: Glitching Marcy into that scene crashes or locks up the game, because the developers did not believe players would intentionally glitch her into the room.
- Enforced: The developers were unable to patch the glitch that made this possible, and decided implementing it as a feature would be less costly than the expenses in removing it.
- Lampshaded:Jordan: How did you get into the Control Room?
Marcy: Apparently I can phase through walls.- Doing something impossible which they don't have a cutscene for results in a Flash Forward specifically showing the debriefing officer calling bullshit
- Invoked: The developers wanted their player base to feel that they were clever.
- Exploited: Dr. Despicable will frequently bend reality and break to fourth wall to attack Jordan and Marcy through these sequence breaks.
- Defied: Instead of accounting for players attempting to glitch into the room as Marcy, the developers ran bug tests to ensure it was absolutely impossible and players would just play normally.
- Implied: The dialog from Captain Charlie after defeating Evil Elliot is identical if the expected lethal force is used or a highly improbable unarmed knock-out. However his line is phrased and acted with a tone that it could be Foreshadowing to a twist that Charlie murders POWs.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "You can do anything in this game. Sneaking around the other side of the building, hang-gliding, using Marcy to complete that bit where Jordan's supposed to hack the computer..."
- Played For Laughs: If you have Marcy for hacking the computer it is revealed that Marcy is actually Jordan in disguise. When you proceed to when you would originally encounter Marcy as Jordan she rips off the disguise and demands to know why the hell you were disguised as her. Ironically this mechanically results in Jordan joining at that point.
- Played For Horror: Attempting to bypass a character death results in the echoing voice of 'you cannot outrun your destiny' before Marcy gets Dragged Off to Hell and a doppelganger is set back onto the 'proper' course.
- Deconstructed:
- Sequence breaking permanently lowers your Sanity Meter if it is mild You Shouldn't Know This Already type bypasses or those which require abuse of proper game mechanics like Rocket Jumping. Anything which violates causality or requires clipping abuse results in permanent distortion and in the worst case causes a Time Crash bad end.
- The game is delayed over and over again because the developer is going overboard with this. It's not only enough that some people comment of the protagonist's sock color, but everyone should also acknowledge how long he has been wearing them, if they've been changed in the last few days, if they've been damaged in battle, why did the player put them on their plate, etc. The end result is a game that came out four years late, feels extremely unfocused and is difficult to follow because the creator spent too much time coding cool interactivity over making it fun to play.
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