Sorry, just seeing this now Try to picture you flying a plane in a game. You're over a lake and your plane is occluding a mountain in the distance. With SSR,

Sorry, just seeing this now Try to picture you flying a plane in a game. You're over a lake and your plane is occluding a mountain in the distance. With SSR, those bits of the mountain your plane is blocking won't be rendered in the reflection. Same with a fishing rod. They're tall and block a lot of things in the distance, thus breaking SSR. Pay attention to the reflection in the water here when Sonic casts the rod (time-stamped): https://youtube.com/watch?v=IaPMkpDOFng&t=42s https://youtube.com/watch?v=IaPMkpDOFng&t=42s Since it doesn't make sense to have a hole in a reflection when there's not actually a hole in the object, the reflection just stops when something occludes the object being reflected.