Breakable wall

A breakable wall, as its name implies, is a piece of structure that can be destroyed due to an action taken by the player, this generally being by striking it directly with a weapon. Once the wall is destroyed, a useful item will usually be uncovered for the player to pick up (which in most games is a health-restoring item).

Breakable walls have appeared in most games that conform the Castlevania series, starting from the very first game, and have since become a staple in the franchise. As the series progressed and role playing elements were added to some of the games' mechanics (such as was the case of Symphony of the Night), not only walls, but ceilings and floors were also added to the roster of environmental segments that could be destroyed. Furthermore, instead of simply revealing an item, they oftentimes gave access to secret rooms full of treasures, or outright all new areas of the castle.

While some games lack the presence of breakable walls entirely (such as Harmony of Dissonance and certain other titles), these were instead replaced with mechanical barriers that required specific actions taken by the player to make them move (such as stepping on a pressure plate, interacting with or utilizing a key in a contraption, detonating a bomb, or destroying an object to make a wall move elsewhere) and allow access to whatever secrets they hid behind them.

Two special kinds of walls were introduced in Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles, one made of Red Skeletons' bones and the other made of crystals. These would reform themselves immediately after being struck, thus impeding further progress, and could only be permanently destroyed by the acquisition of special items given to the player by two of the missing villagers after rescuing them.