Anyone have a skeleton key?
"You will stay here, but you will be somewhere where you can't make any trouble," he said as he grabbed Harry by the neck and dragged him to the garden Shed. He padlocked the door with at least 20 locks.
When a Two-Keyed Lock is not enough for The Paranoiac, maybe what they need is more locks. Lots and lots more. Enough that even they, with the keys, will take minutes to open them all, never mind what an intruder would have to go through.
Of course, sometimes that level of "security" will come back to bite them, when they really need to reach the other side of the door in a hurry and are hindered by their own precautions. Meanwhile, thieves might just take the whole thing, break it open with brute force, go around it, pass right through it, or trick (or Blackmail) the owner into opening it for them. Still, fiction abounds with Properly and Improperly Paranoid or otherwise Crazy-Prepared characters who festoon their homes and belongings with more locks than they really know what to do with, whether Played for Laughs or much more serious.
For a more rushed version, see Berserk Board Barricade. If the surrounding door and frame aren't up to the same quality standard as the locks, see Myopic Architecture. If there's just one lock, but the key is in many pieces, see Dismantled MacGuffin.
Examples:
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Comic Strips
- A one-panel cartoon by Charles Addams published in The New Yorker shows a man locking a front door which has three locks, three deadbolts and a security bar, while failing to notice the Circling Saw under his feet.
Fan Works
- In the infamous Harry Potter fanfic A Sad Story, Vernon locks Harry in a shed and padlocks the door with at least twenty locks.
- Justice (Black' Victor Cachat):
- The meat freezer Franky made for Sanji is intended to keep Luffy out and resembles more of a heavily fortified bank vault. Its eighteen-digit passcode changes daily, it has eight thick steel doors, and once said doors open, you have to immediately yell 'Tofu forever' to disarm what sounds like an ominous number of traps.
- The prison cell that the Joker made to hold Aresia is the securest in his base. It consists of a keypad lock, a voice lock (for which he "[warbles] like a demented duck"), a DNA lock (saliva-triggered), a retina lock, and finally a scanner that identifies his bare backside.
- The Weaver's Web: The Investigator arrives at a murder scene, and the victim's husband confirms that the door was open when he arrived home at 8:50 — a door with five locks on it, showing that the couple were very security-conscious.
Someone she wasn't threatened by. Someone she trusted to open the door to, after dark, in the Bay.
- With This Ring (2013): Once Paul found out what the Spear of Destiny actually does, he locked it up tightly with both technology and magic. However, he designed it such that the orange light could still unlock it.
Open. Yes, really.
Force fields disengage, runic defences are moved apart and rendered inactive by mechanical ratchets, explosives disarm… A bit depressing that this was what I plundered the database I took from Lantern Stewart's ring for, but it was all in a good cause.
Films — Animation
- The Curse of the Were-Rabbit: When the titular beast goes robbing the neighbours of vegetables, one woman locks her greenhouse with what seems to be many locks. She is later seen regretting it when the Were-Rabbit burrows under said greenhouse and takes the veggies within, complete with a despair-infused Big "NO!" as she tries and fails to unlock the greenhouse and save them.
- Ed, Edd n Eddy's Big Picture Show:
- After a scam goes horribly wrong, the Eds use Eddy's brother's room as a shelter to hide from the other kids. When the kids find them anyway, the locks on the door hold them off long enough for the Eds to find a key to Eddy's brother's car.
- After escaping the Cald-A-Sac, Eddy decides that he and his friends will travel to his brother's place for shelter from the kids' wrath. When they arrive, and Eddy's brother opens the door to his trailer, the inside shows that the door is covered in locks.
- The Incredibles: Edna Mode's display room has a keypad lock, a hand scanner, an ocular scanner, and a voice recognition device, with turrets in the ceiling ready to shoot any imposters or unwelcome guests.
- Klaus (2019): After accidentally startling an Ax-Crazy Krum father during a chimney delivery, Jesper tries for a quick escape via the front door — where he discovers that the exit is secured by an absurd number of slide bolts. Jesper scrambles to undo the locks one by one, barely managing to fling the door open and dive to safety just as the enraged father takes a shot at him.
- Madagascar: When Alex finally swallows his pride and goes to Marty's "fun side" hut to apologize, Marty can be heard undoing various locks before opening the door to let him in... even though Alex could have easily gone around it since the place has no walls.
- Mickey's Christmas Carol: Upon first encountering Marley's ghost, a frightened Scrooge dashes into his chambers and hurriedly seals the door with half a dozen locks. It's no use, however, as the ghost simply phases through the door.
- Downplayed in the short film Presto. The titular magician has four locks on the door to his dressing room to keep prying eyes away from his magical equipment.
- Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island: Shaggy goes to a room to hide from the Moat Monster and locks the door with its many bolts.
- Toy Story: Andy's neighbor, Sid, has a whole bunch of locks on the inside of his bedroom door, presumably to keep his sister and/or parents from snooping. At one point, he is shown rushing to get them all open before throwing his door open and running downstairs.
- Up: Carl has many locks on his door, which shows how he's closed off to the world now that his beloved wife died.
Films — Live-Action
- Conspiracy Theory: Jerry's paranoia is so extreme that he not only has multiple locks on his apartment door, but he also has them on his refrigerator to prevent anyone from tampering with his food. When he finally gets the fridge open, every item inside is in an individually locked container.
- Day Shift: Bud, the blue collar Vampire Hunter, has installed a dozen locks and security chains inside the door of his rental apartment, and is shocked when visiting his estranged wife who is trying to sell their old house, seeing that she had removed the ones that used to be on their front door. These vampires don't need an invitation to enter, so the extra security is important.
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002): When Harry is about to escape from his locked bedroom through the window, aided by the Weasleys in their flying car, Uncle Vernon tries to unlock Harry's door to prevent this; a door which he had previously locked with many locks, to prevent Harry from escaping, which now delays him long enough for Harry to get away.
- Nobody: When Hutch goes to a seedy tattoo parlor to enquire about the tattoo he saw on the wrist of a burglar, the patrons and the owner try to intimidate him away. An old veteran notices his own wrist tattoo, says "thank you for your service," quickly retreats to a back room, and we hear several different locks click shut one by one.
- The Producers (1967): When Max Bialystock is approaching donors who are willing to fund his destined-to-fail play Springtime for Hitler, one of the donors is an old woman who leaves Max standing outside her front door for several seconds while the sound of multiple locks being unlocked can be heard.
Literature
- Discworld:
- Guards! Guards!: When Captain Vimes is thrown into the same cell as Lord Vetinari, he's surprised to find that the Patrician is unbothered about being locked in a cell with a door that has many bolts and bars preventing any possible escape. When Vimes ask about this, Vetinari tells him to look at the door more carefully. After a few moments of examination, Vimes realizes what he's seeing, that all the bolts and bars are on the inside of the cell door, with only the lock on the outside (one for which Vetinari secretly has a duplicate key in that same cell, though Vimes is unaware) — turning what should have been confinement for Vetinari into a very defensible bunker under his control.
- Hogfather: The door to the Tooth Fairy's personal quarters is secured by seven magical locks, each of which is impervious to the traditional lockpicking methods used by Teatime's locksmith. By the time Teatime's wizard has figured out the secret to unlocking them, the Tooth Fairy Castle's defenses are fully online and Susan has reached the castle to help with the ones the defenses can't affect.
- The Doom Brigade: Selquist locks his chest with three locks.
- The Hand of Thrawn: Ghent locks himself inside a room on a space station, where he's going to slice into an Imperial database, searching for the Caamas document — and then, hours later, he notices that there's a firefight happening outside the station, moving ever closer. However, when he tries to run, he realises that he has set up so many layers of passwords, making it impossible for any attacker to get in, that even he himself would need half an hour to unlock the door and get out, which would be far too late.
- River of Dancing Gods — Vengeance of Dancing Gods: The Big Good wizard has a genie lamp that he keeps protected by three doors that each have many locks and magical protections to keep anyone but him from being able to open them (and it's implied that it takes him several days to do so), and which door actually leads to the lamp changes randomly, and if the wrong door is opened it won't change to that door until it's shut. Someone finds a way to bypass the security by picking the locks on one door, then waiting until the passage to the lamp switches over to that door, at which point he opened it and was able to steal the lamp.
- Saintess Summons Skeletons:
- Sofia is impressed by the multiple layers of magic barriers around each teacher's apartment at Brighthall Academy, figuring that if she's ever in danger, she could hide inside, and even her [Angel's Bolt] at high power probably couldn't break them. Unfortunately it does mean waiting around for a while to open the door.
After twenty seconds of the complex magic locks of the layered barriers opening one by one, the door finally unlocked. Sofia entered and closed it behind her, the barrier instantly closing back up. At least it's only opening that's slow.
- Sofia's party finds a vault in the Forbidden Layer with six separate locks controlling so many dragon scale gates that Pestle comments "Entire dragon is door." Jin's Skeleton Key opens them all with a single turn in one of the locks.
- Sofia is impressed by the multiple layers of magic barriers around each teacher's apartment at Brighthall Academy, figuring that if she's ever in danger, she could hide inside, and even her [Angel's Bolt] at high power probably couldn't break them. Unfortunately it does mean waiting around for a while to open the door.
Live-Action TV
- The Brittas Empire - "In the Beginning...": The locker containing the staff's food supplies whilst the staff are Snowed-In is locked with three padlocks, with each of the centre's managers having a key. Julie snarkily suggests that it's in case any of them goes mad. This quickly poses problems when Colin's coat, which had his key in it, is stored in an area in the centre which freezes over due to a broken water pipe, forcing Brittas to get Colin to drill through the lock and inadvertently destroy the supplies.
- A skit on The Electric Company (1971) had someone securing a door with an assortment of at least 6 locks. The character then opens the door to leave by opening the door backwards, i.e., the side with the closed locks serving as the hinges.
- K.C. Undercover: In "Double Crossed", Craig and Kira install five extra locks on their door. The sudden increase in security confuses the kids, until the parents explain that Zane, an Other Side agent with a vendetta against the Coopers, is on the loose.
- In the MacGyver (1985) episode "Hell Week", one of the contestants in the dorm room blockade challenge modifies his dorm room door to have many standard door bolt locks from the top to the bottom of the door. Some are set to unlock when the key is turned clockwise, others when it is turned counterclockwise. Some are pre-set in the locked position, others are already unlocked. With no way to see the state of the bolts, the challenge is to figure out which is which.
- Not the Nine O'Clock News: One episode ends with somebody locking himself into a toilet cubicle with many locks and bolts, before sitting on the toilet. Moments later, the wall of the cubicle opens to reveal a crowded sports stadium.
- Ohsama Sentai King-Ohger: The door to Rita Kaniska's personal quarters is secured by an excessive number of locks to hide the fact that it's the Trash of the Titans in there and that she's obsessed with cute yeti plushies. This is reflective of Rita's Not So Above It All personality.
- A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017): Subverted. Uncle Monty's Reptile Room appears to have an intricate system of locks in order to keep it safe from intruders (Monty is very paranoid about spies from the Herpetological Society stealing his discoveries) but in reality, all it takes is turning a particular knob. Monty justifies this by claiming that they'll be so preoccupied by all the false locks they won't find the actual way to open it.
- Torchwood: Miracle Day: "Escape to L.A." has Esther visit her sister, who has locked herself away in her house with five locks and a chain on her front door. She does this because, thanks to the Miracle making everyone immortal, she feels that humanity has become godless and fears for the safety of both herself and her family.
Radio
- The Navy Lark: When getting drinks in "The Anniversary and the Washing", Commander Murray takes ages getting all the locks off the cocktail cabinet in his cabin. Once he's finished, CPO Pertwee mutters, "At last, Ali Baba's cave is open".
Theatre
- In Freak, John Leguizamo playacts as his mom letting his dad into their New York apartment, and mimes undoing at least a dozen locks on the front door all the way to the floor.
John Leguizamo: We lived on Roosevelt Avenue.
Video Games
- Dark Fall: Lost Souls: The water tower and second floor of the Dowerton hotel are barricaded by a half dozen padlocks and chains. When you help Gloria Grable pass on, she gives you her lock picks to open them.
- Doodle Champion Island Games: One of the sidequests involves getting 50 locks from a locksmith for Petunia, a porcupine that's rather perturbed by the fact that anyone can enter her house. After Lucky delivers the locks, Petunia locks her whole house.
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: Esbern, a member of the Blades hiding out in the Ratway beneath Riften, has several locks on his door that the Dragonborn has to wait for him to unlock on their arrival to recruit him for Delphine. He doesn't believe you're from Delphine until you give him a line she told you to say. All of this because he is paranoid that the Thalmor are trying to find and kill him. He turns out to be right, as you fight them on the way out.
- JumpStart:
- In JumpStart Adventures 4th Grade: Haunted Island, each door in Ms. Grunkle's house has five locks on it. The overarching goal of the game is finding the 25 keys to unlock them all, done so by playing the various minigames around the island.
- In JumpStart Typing, you need to free Coach Qwerty from the trophy room. The trophy room door has seven locks, each of which can only be unlocked by achieving a personalized words per minute typing goal.
- Subverted in Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge when Guybrush walks up to a huge door covered in locks, chains, and Schizo Tech security — and just uses the Open command to open a much smaller door within it.
- Myst III: Exile: When the player first arrives at Tomahna, Catherine greets them but lets them know that Atrus might be delayed, because he's been paranoid about security recently and is likely to spend hours checking the house and resetting the padlocks he has placed everywhere. He's not wrong about the intruder, and the padlock he's placed on the Releeshahn book is what delays the antagonist long enough for the player to recover the book.
- Quake II: The heavily guarded "Grid Control" requires the use of multiple keys just to get in (in addition to the Red and Blue Keys, the entrance to the area is through a pyramid with a shielded door inside, both of which require a Pyramid Key and a Security Pass respectively, and at one point you're required to have a Data CD just to access one of said keys), due to the importance of the location.
- Rabbit Hole (ShortCake): The Library basement has a door with three locks on chains. Opening it by completing achievements is the main macrogame objective of the game.
- The Silent Hill series is fond of this one:
- Your first mini-quest in Silent Hill 1 is to unlock a single back door in a home, redundantly sealed with three rather sturdy locks. Doing so requires you to find three The Wonderful Wizard of Oz-themed keys hidden in the northeast quadrant of the town map.
- Silent Hill 2 features a lock box in Brookhaven Hospital secured with four different locks: two are combination-based and two are key-based. The contents of the box are combined with another item to find yet another key and unlock another door.
- Silent Hill 4 begins five days after Henry Townshend woke up to find his front door covered in locks and chains on the inside, and without any keys.
- Unreal Tournament 2004: One of the objectives of the Assault map AS-BP2-Outback, from the official Mega Pack, involves entering the Zero Beer brewery through a door locked by three padlocks. The problem is that the map doesn't feature the keys for these locks anywhere, so the only option for the attackers is to destroy the locks with indiscriminate weapon fire.
- The main goal in World of Horror is to get to the top of the Lighthouse in order to stop the summoning ritual for the run's chosen Old God. However, said entrance has five padlocks preventing the player from entering it. To unlock them, the player must complete five mysteries (only four on the Skeptic difficulty) in order to get the five keys that'll open them.
Visual Novels
- Ace Attorney:
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations: During the final case of the game, a door inside a meditation cave belonging to a mountain temple is locked with five trick locks, which bear a resemblance to the Psyche Locks that Phoenix can see with his magatama.
- Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney: In the final case of the game, when the Psyche Lock mechanic is reintroduced, Phoenix Wright finds Kristoph Gavin's Psyche Locks are the maximum of five, and are uniquely black, marking them as unbreakable.
- Katawa Shoujo: Kenji has apparently installed at least a dozen extra locks on the door of his dorm room, as a result of his paranoia. His neighbour Hisao repeatedly remarks how unsettling it is to hear so many locks being clicked open in sequence every time Kenji has to open the door.
Web Animation
- The Gaslight District: When Ken the Butch drags his daughter Mel into the freezer for a father/daughter talk, he swiftly bars the door and locks several locks up the door to make sure no one can get in to overhear their conversation involving Mel's secret as the prophesied human.
Western Animation
- The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius: In "Return Of The Nanobots", Hugh has several kinds of locks on the door to his workshop, the better to not be disturbed during his private time with his model ducks.
- Batman: The Animated Series: In the Riddler's origin episode, a video game CEO steals Nigma's intellectual property and fires him, with Riddler nearly killing him later. At the end of the episode, after saving the man, Robin laments that he's going to be a Karma Houdini and get to keep his ill-gotten gains, but Batman muses that, with Riddler still on the loose, the man will never have a good night's sleep again. Over this narration we see the man turn about eight locks on his door and nervously crawl into bed clutching a shotgun.
- The Cramp Twins: In "Holesome", Wayne's bedroom door has no less than five different locking mechanisms installed on the inside — which are absent in most other episodes — and he employs them all to keep himself safe inside from his mother, who wants to test her new, likely-acidic cleaning spray on her family.
- Ed, Edd n Eddy: In the episode, "O-Ed-Eleven", Eddy invites his friends to his brother's room, with the door being covered with locks from the inside and outside. So in order to get inside, Eddy smashes a crowbar between the door and the frame.
- Family Guy: In "Brian Wallows and Peter's Swallows", Brian is sentenced to community service and forced to tend to an elderly recluse named Pearl, who is so distrustful of the outside world that she has many locks along her front door. When Brian finally becomes fed up with her and leaves, he has trouble undoing one of the locks and asks her to do it for him.
- The Simpsons: In The Itchy & Scratchy Show short in ''Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily'', the Ax-Crazy Mouse Itchy's favorite victim, Scratchy, is shown to have at least eleven hi-tech locks on the front door to his house, as well as a shotgun right next to it. Scratchy may have good reason for this, given that the moment he very cautiously answers the door to check on a Door Stop Baby, it turns out to be Itchy, who gruesomely attacks him with a broken milk bottle.