While recently playing Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story,  I ran into a stumbling block that stumped me for an hour. (The rest of this may contain spoilers for the game depending on your definition of spoiler. And your definition of may.)

When the game sent me to look for the third sage with a star cure, I ran through the area known as the Dimble Woods with Mario and Luigi. After encountering the first attack piece in the area, I figured, "Hey, new special attack", and started collecting them. After gathering six of the ten pieces needed to get the attack, I wander into an area where a Wiggler instructs me that due to the recent traumatic events in the forest, I can't go into this area.

Why this particular area, I don't know. Having explored every other area of the forest, I figure the remaining pieces are past Wiggler. He isn't that tall, so I try to jump over him. Unfortunately, he has an impenetrable sky-tall force field he is carrying on his back. He can't be dug under, and although I beat the ever-loving crud out of a Wiggler much earlier in the game, I can't declare Mortal Kombat on him. As such, I am stumped, and spend an hour looking around the woods for a means to bypass him.

It turns out that I need to wait until I talk to the sage on top of the mountain, who kindly reveals he is only vulnerable to the attack in Dimble Woods. At which point, talking to the Wiggler has you explain that you're looking for the attack pieces, and he lets you past. Why M&L were incapable of this an hour earlier, I have no clue. Probably because surprising the sage with this attack would break sequence, destroying a finely crafted plot... no, they could just skip to the cut scene where you use it. Yeah, I'm baffled. Couldn't they have just sealed off the rest of the attack pieces until I got to the point where it would have unlocked the rest of them?

This is a textbook example of a Broken Bridge: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BrokenBridge