There are a number of facts in multivariable calculus that are obvious but hard to prove. For instance, the change-of-variables formula in a multiple integral is very easy to justify heuristically by talking about little parallelepipeds but troublesome (as I discovered to my cost in a course I once gave) to justify rigorously. And the same goes for the inverse function theorem: although the proof can be made quite transparent and the need for continuous differentiability makes good intuitive sense, there seems to be an irreducible core of actual work needed (in particular, the use of a fixed-point theorem to replace the use of the intermediate-value theorem in the 1D case).
I'd be quite glad to be told that this answer was wrong. If anyone knows of a link to an exposition of these results, particularly the first, that does proper justice to their intuitive obviousness, I'd be very pleased to hear about it.
