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Shoot Out the Lock: Difference between revisions
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The [[Speculative Fiction]] version is shooting [[Destruction Equals Off Switch|the control panel]] for the automatic door or force field, or [[Force Field Door|automatic force field door]]. While there are doors that "fail safe" or "fail open" when power is cut, in fiction this is always coincidentally whichever the shooter and/or plot requires. (Note to villains: The [[Evil Overlord List]] recommends rigging yours to reverse this.)
[https://web.archive.org/web/20131104042508/http://www.theboxotruth.com/docs/bot5.htm Tested on ''The Box O'Truth''.]
Not to be confused with [[Thrown Out the Airlock|getting shot out of an airlock.]]
{{examples}}
* Commercials for Weatherby ammunition would show a lock penetrated, but not completely destroyed, by a rifle cartridge.▼
* For years, the Master Lock company ran TV commercials during the [[Super Bowl]] where they would shoot one of their own padlocks with a gun to demonstrate its durability. This is an interesting application of [[Reality Is Unrealistic]], because its effectiveness is based on viewers' expectations that a lock will break when fired at. (This commercial is referenced in the [[Stephen King]]-as-Richard-Bachman novella "[[Rage (novel)|Rage]]", when the narrator/protagonist puts his locker padlock in his shirt pocket, where it later saves him from a sharpshooter [[Pocket Protector|bullet in the heart]]. The narrator mentions later viewing that commercial, with adverse emotional effects.)▼
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* Gets played with in the first episode of ''[[Gosick]]''. We see a maid shooting at a locked door, ostensibly to free her master, who is locked inside. Turns out that the maid is killing the master via a shot to the eye ''through the keyhole'' while the master was peeking through the hole.
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* In one of the ''[[War Picture Library]]'' comics, the heroes are freeing a captured British spy from prison, and one suggests shooting out the lock. The spy responds: "You've been watching too many cowboy movies; the ricochets would kill us all." (As the prison has stone walls and a steel door).
* ''[[Bookhunter]]'''s opening scene shows a SWAT team using a shotgun with "shocklock rounds". In the preliminary briefing, Agent Bay points out that the hallway's layout prevents them from using a ram.
▲== [[Commercials]] ==
▲* Commercials for Weatherby ammunition would show a lock penetrated, but not completely destroyed, by a rifle cartridge.
▲* For years, the Master Lock company ran TV commercials during the [[Super Bowl]] where they would shoot one of their own padlocks with a gun to demonstrate its durability. This is an interesting application of [[Reality Is Unrealistic]], because its effectiveness is based on viewers' expectations that a lock will break when fired at. (This commercial is referenced in the [[Stephen King]]-as-Richard-Bachman novella "[[Rage (novel)|Rage]]", when the narrator/protagonist puts his locker padlock in his shirt pocket, where it later saves him from a sharpshooter [[Pocket Protector|bullet in the heart]]. The narrator mentions later viewing that commercial, with adverse emotional effects.)
== [[Film]] ==
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* Spoofed in the ''[[Discworld]]'' novel ''Guards! Guards!'', where Captain Vimes orders Sergeant Colon to shoot the lock off a gate...while Colon is armed with a crossbow.
** Detritus later gets a siege crossbow called the 'Piecemaker' which can shoot out the lock...and the door...and the surrounding wall...and just about anything else in a 270-degree arc.
* There was a sci-fi book once where the variant seen in Star Wars - shooting it to keep it closed - was attempted, but it just jammed the door into "open". Don't remember the title, though.{{verify}}
* Lampshaded and averted in ''[[Sharpe]]'' - someone suggests shooting open a lock, but Sharpe points out that all it does is mangle the levers and make it worse. He does play it straight once, but in a way that would work. He shoots the door in. ''[[No Kill Like Overkill|With a cannon]].''
** Played straight in the TV series.
* A character in the ''Island'' series of
* The first ''[[Doom]]'' novel had the hero, as in the game, looking for many keys. The important thing was, blasting open a locked door was entirely possible, given his sci-fi ammunition, it was just that he preferred to save the bullets for the horrible monsters intending to eat him.
* Averted: When faced with a padlocked gate in ''[[The Bourne Supremacy]]'', Jason Bourne noted how useless shooting the lock would be, resulting in only shrapnel and wasted bullets. Instead, he cuts through the fence a discreet distance to the side.
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* In another Clancy work, ''[[Clear and Present Danger]]'', the character doesn't even bother aiming at the lock. Instead, he fires five rounds from his revolver to separate the lock from the door and then opens it, "just like in the movies"—an unusual way of invoking the trope, since most movies don't bother with shoot-cutting the lock.
== [[Live
* The above-mentioned ''[[MythBusters]]'' episode, where they determined that the average handgun would not destroy a lock, and that doing so with higher-powered guns was not particularly safe.
* Called out by ''[[MacGyver]]'' in "The Wish Child", where Mac, being a [[Technical Pacifist]], explains that shooting a lock won't work. Instead, he empties powder from a cartridge into the lock, then clubs the shell casing with the gun to blow up the lock from the inside.
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*** Which doesn't make much sense unless the Wraith use special materials in their locks, as the 5.7x28mm round used in the P90 is specially designed to defeat high-quality armor.
** An earlier SG-1 episode manages to avert this, when an NID agent uses a machine pistol on full auto to shoot ''around'' a lock, completely separating it from the rest of the door (and he actually reloads afterward, for bonus verisimilitude).
* Both subverted and used (almost) correctly in the ''[[Firefly (TV series)|Firefly]]'' episode "Ariel." Jayne attempts to shoot out a lock with a futuristic stun gun, resulting in total indifference on the part of the door (stun rifles aren't really designed to blow out locks anyway). However, {{spoiler|Mal's shotgun does a much better job at shooting out the lcok, doing substantial damage to the door itself}}.
* In the ''[[Chuck]]'' episode "Chuck Versus the Marlin," Casey shoots open the lock to free Sarah who had been locked in a freezer by an enemy spy.
* Kate successfully shoots a padlock in the ''[[Lost]]'' episode "Eggtown."
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