Along the way, Barbie’s friends and teammates supply her with the gadgets, training and strategies needed to complete each mission.
This game provides examples of:
- Art Major Physics: Because putting on a translucent/transparent suit would really make you absolutely invisible from top to bottom.
- Backtracking: Though often areas you've visited will have changed, or some areas will be blocked off.
- But Thou Must!: The thief will always be suspiciously faster than you, and you must always let the thief get away.
- Cool Plane: Barbie and her team have their own very large and very pink private jet, which acts as their primary mode of transportation, as well as their secret headquarters.
- Culture Equals Costume: Averted in Brazil and France, but played straight just about everywhere else.
- Easing into the Adventure: Unless you skip it, the start of the game is Barbie doing some Virtual Training before receiving the call from Theresa.
- Equipment Reset Button: Barbie's inventory is changed each level so that she always has what she needs.
- Gadget Watches: Barbie uses a watch to communicate with her friends back at base while she’s on a mission. When it’s not being used in this way, it functions as a minimap/GPS device. Also see Super Wrist-Gadget below.
- Goggles Do Something Unusual: One of Barbie’s gadgets is her Pink Vision Goggles, which help her to see coded messages within her environment.
- The Guards Must Be Crazy: The security guards in all of the levels are easily distracted by Barbie's Robot Dog, fail to respond to loud alarms, and apparently fail to see Barbie even if she's about two feet away from them and stealthily rolling across the floor. They are very polite to Barbie if they do happen to spot her though.
- Improbable Weapon User: To call them weapons is a stretch, but Barbie's arsenal of gadgets consists of: a lipstick, a swingshot that's a wristband, a bottle of perfume, a robot puppy, a camera, some glasses and a compact of foundation that causes a huge cloud of smoke. Yeah.
- Instant Costume Change: Barbie performs these when changing among Stealth, Action and Adventure modes, sometimes in broad daylight, in a public area, while surrounded by a crowd. This is never mentioned or explained.
- Jet Pack: You can get one by typing JET whilst in action mode. It's a bit of a
Scrappy Mechanic, though, as it's essentially just one long continuous jump when you hold down the space bar. - Invisibility Cloak: The thief stole Theresa’s designs in order to create a ‘Translucent Suit’, which is said to provide the wearer with near invisibility when worn.
- Limited Sound Effects: A lot of the guards sound the same.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Some of the guards have an uncanny resemblance to a pixelated Ben Stiller.
- No Peripheral Vision: The guards seem to have this. In fact, you can see their exact field of vision on the minimap. You could be standing right next to one of the guards, but as long as you’re not in that vision field, you won’t get noticed.
- Now, Where Was I Going Again?: A particularly cruel example. You can save mid-mission and quit, but upon reloading your save, you have to start from the beginning of the mission again.
- Robot Dog: One of Barbie’s gadgets is a robot dog that looks suspiciously like a Poochie (that robotic toy dog from the Turn of the Millennium). It’s used to distract guards and reach small spaces where Barbie can’t fit.
- Run, Don't Walk: You can only run in Action Mode, you can only walk in Adventure Mode but you can only run once in Stealth Mode, otherwise you're reduced to sneaking.
- Scripted Event: It's perfectly possible (with the aid of a cheat) to catch up to Camille when she's stolen the puzzle box, but you have to let her escape.
- Stealth-Based Game: At least a third of the time, Barbie is in ‘Stealth Mode’.
- Stealth Expert: It’s hard to believe that Barbie can go by unnoticed in the highly colourful ‘Stealth Mode’ outfit that she wears, especially when she’s ‘stealthing’ in sparsely populated areas. This is, therefore, the only explanation.
- Stock Foreign Name: The person who helps Barbie when she goes to Tokyo is a saleswoman who goes by "Mrs. Tanaka," who helped Teresa create a special dye for the fabrics that she used in her clothing line. "Tanaka" is a very common last name in Japan.
- Stupidity Is the Only Option: In one mission, Barbie has to set up a trap for the main villain by using the MacGuffin she just got. Cue facepalming when the villain arrives, steals the MacGuffin and forces a futile chase after them.
- Super Wrist-Gadget: The UI shows a bracelet along the bottom of the screen; each ‘link’ in the chain contains the icon for one of Barbie’s many gadgets. Since she doesn’t carry a bag or have anywhere else to store these items, it’s implied that she actually keeps them inside her bracelet.
- Tracking Device: Yet another of Barbie’s gadgets, this tracking device comes in the form of tracking perfume. Yeah…
