Basic Trope: A dungeon in a video game can only be visited once and is inaccessible after that.
- Straight: Lord Bad's Palace collapses after the boss is defeated, preventing further exploration.
- Exaggerated: Every area in the game can only be visited once.
- Downplayed: A large section of Lord Bad's Palace is blocked off by rubble, but the exterior area remains explorable.
- Justified:
- Lord Bad hit the Self-Destruct Button for his palace, utterly obliterating the area.
- The palace was simply an illusion put in place by Lord Bad. When he dies, so does the palace.
- The dungeon for the save Innocent Kid Dwayne from the collapsing lair mission is, as the mission-name states, already collapsing.
- Inverted: An area can only be visited after you clear it. As much sense as that makes.
- Subverted:
- Although Lord Bad's Palace is shown crumbling in a Cutscene, the area can be revisited as much as the player wishes.
- Although the dungeon's entrance has collapsed, if you have the fortitude to dig through rubble for 60 days then you'll be able to revisit it.
- Double Subverted:
- However, some of the area is blocked off by undiggable rubble, preventing access.
- The game ends long before you can finish digging through the rubble.
- Parodied: The castle itself shoves the player out, with an accompanying "And STAY out!" sound effect.
- Zig Zagged:
- Lord Bad's Palace becomes inaccessible after being cleared, except a small portion of it can still be explored. However, Emperor Evulz completely obliterates the palace later on, since a Plot Coupon was hidden in there... except Hiro can use time magic to travel inside one last time to get the Plot Coupon, but after that, the dungeon is truly sealed off.
- You can dig through the rubble of the collapsed entrance, but this takes longer than the main game lasts, however if you win the main game, then you can dig through at your own leisure in the postgame.
- Averted: All areas in the game can be revisited at the player's will.
- Enforced:
- Locking the player out of the palace frees up several Event Flags to reuse in other places, saving up precious memory space.
- Story And Game Play Integration: The collapsing castle cutscene showed so much destruction that the devs decided that it would be illogical for the dungeon below to still be accessible.
- Lampshaded: "It's almost like some cosmic figure is trying to prevent us from wasting time..."
- Invoked: The player is warned not to go back to Lord Bad's Palace, because rubble has sealed off the entrances.
- Exploited: Emperor Evulz traps his enemies in Lord Bad's Palace. If the area seals itself off after completion, they will starve to death.
- Defied: Hiro blows away the rubble blocking access to the palace, allowing multiple visits.
- Discussed: "Dang it! Lord Bad's palace collapsed! Now I'll never get that Elixir of Life...
- Conversed: "You still play Legends of Troperia? That game sucks! You can't even revisit areas you've cleared!" "Isn't that part of the charm?"
- Implied: The player sees Lord Bad's Palace as a pile of rubble on the map once the level is over.
- Deconstructed: All the prisoners trapped in Lord Bad's Palace starve, since there's no way to rescue them.
- Reconstructed: The defeat of Lord Bad teleports everyone out of the palace, saving the prisoners, but the palace is still sealed off forever.
- Played For Laughs: "Oh, come on! First they defeat me, then I can't even go back in to collect what I missed? I paid good money for those spiked gauntlets!"
- Played For Drama: We are shown, later in the game, the mourning families of those that were killed when the palace collapsed.
You can go back to One-Time Dungeon, but this link only works once.
