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The Key Is Behind the Lock: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:automotive-locked-keys-in-
Something important is locked. There is a key. However, this key is inside. You need the key to reach the key.
While this trope can be [[Played for Laughs]] with trivial situations such as locking your car keys in the car, many works that use it choose to employ it in a far more dramatic manner. The hero is on a quest to find the key, eventually finding some other way to reach what he needed the key for - and then he finds out that his initial quest was futile; the key was inside all along.
{{examples}}
* In one episode of ''[[Cardcaptor Sakura]]'', [[MacGuffin Girl|Tomoyo]] has been trapped in a classroom as {{spoiler|Eriol messed with the floor plan as a test for Sakura}}. Sakura needs to find her, and Syaoran says he has a magical technique that can locate lost people, provided she has left an object behind. (Not unlike a dog using scent, except [[w:Law of contagion|it works off auras/energy signatures]].) Tomoyo ''did'' have an umbrella...but it's with her in the very classroom they're trying to locate.
▲== Anime & Manga ==
▲* In one episode of ''[[Cardcaptor Sakura]]'', [[MacGuffin Girl|Tomoyo]] has been trapped in a classroom as {{spoiler|Eriol messed with the floor plan as a test for Sakura}}. Sakura needs to find her, and Syaoran says he has a magical technique that can locate lost people, provided she has left an object behind. (Not unlike a dog using scent, except it works off auras/energy signatures.) Tomoyo ''did'' have an umbrella...but it's with her in the very classroom they're trying to locate.
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* In the [[Donald Duck]] story "[http://coa.inducks.org/story.php?c=W+WDC+206-02 Sagmore Springs Hotel]", Donald, as a Hotel Manager, accidentally locks the combination to the hotel safe inside the safe. In his attempts to open it, he ends up devastating the entire hotel and destroying his uncle's important cheque.
== [[Film]] -- Animated ==
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== [[Film]] -- Live Action ==
* In ''[[Back to The Future]]'', Marty is locked in a car trunk, along with the keys to the trunk.
{{quote|'''Lazlo''': You locked my son in the trunk?
'''Oz''': No! No, sir. He locked himself in the trunk.
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== [[Literature]] ==
* In ''[[Blå Tornet]]'', the Guardian has been sleeping on the High Altar for over a thousand years. There are a lot of prophecies about how a chosen one will one day wake him. In the meantime, one of the worst blasphemy someone can do is to touch The Guardians holy sleeping body. It turns out that they artifact needed to wake the Guardian is in fact inside the altar: Only a blasphemer can heal the horrible wrong that happened so long ago, and lead the civilization back on the quest the creators had originally intended.
* [[Discworld]]:
** There's a recurring gag in
** Also, in ''[[
** In ''[[
* A fairly standard situation in the [[Locked Room Mystery]] is for the police to have to break into the Locked Room, because the key is inside with the deceased.
* Subverted in a short story by [[Isaac Asimov]], where people are searching for an uranium asteroid an illegal miner found, and due to the miners dying in an accident, all they have is a statement by a silicon based alien that the coordinates are "on the asteroid" (the alien died right after saying that). {{spoiler|In the end it turns out that the alien wasn't good in astronomy, and the coordinates were actually ''on the ship'' - [[Hidden in Plain Sight|hidden among the registration codes of the equipment]]}}.
== [[Live
* Happens in ''[[Corner Gas]]''. Hank had a combination lock that stored the lock's combination.
** Then there was the time he locked his keys in his truck, and didn't notice that his passenger side window was down.
* That happens in an episode of ''[[Get Smart]]'' too, regarding the wall safe in the Chief's office.
{{quote|'''Chief:''' Have you got the new combination, Max?
'''Max:''' ''New'' combination?
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'''Max:''' No I don't, Chief. But I put it in a place where no one will get it.
'''Chief:''' Where, Max?
''Max looks at the wall safe.
* In an episode of ''[[Caroline in The City]]'', Del and Charlie get trapped in Del's car due to a snow plow and Charlie accidentally locking the keys in the trunk instead of an ice scraper.
== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==
* One strip of ''[[The Far Side]]'' had a pair of aliens trapped on Earth. As a crowd of curious humans approaches them, one of them says to the other "Well, here they come. ''You'' locked the keys inside, ''you'' do the talking."
* ''[[Dilbert]]'' presents [http://dilbert.com/strip/1998-05-01 the reason why Alice is not promoted].
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
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* In ''[[Adventure (1979 video game)|Adventure]]'', on the hardest difficulty, the items were distributed in a kind-of-random manner, which occasionally resulted in the gold key being locked in the gold castle.
* In ''[[Zork: Grand Inquisitor]]'', there is a glass box ("In case of adventure, break glass") containing a spell scroll, a sword and a hammer. It can be easily opened, but the clamp holding the sword will not let go. The obvious solution is to {{spoiler|open the box, take the hammer, close the box, break glass. Then the clamp lets go and you can take the sword}}.
* In the NES port of ''[[Metal Gear
** A similar situation occurs in ''[[
* The first level of ''[[Mystery of Time and Space]]'' has the key in the keyhole on the other side of the locked door. To get it, {{spoiler|you have to slide a poster underneath the door and then push something small enough through the keyhole to make the key drop onto the poster, which you can then retrieve}}.
* The [[Interactive Fiction]] game ''[http://www.wurb.com/if/game/1821 Savoir Faire]'' has one locked door where you can see the key through the keyhole. The solution to unlocking this door is more creative than the usual ones, due to the game world's [[Functional Magic]] which lets you "link" similar things to each other so that doing something to one of them will similarly affect the other: {{spoiler|link the key to your sword (it's ornate enough to allow the link) and then turn your sword in its sheath. Voila, an unlocked door!}}
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== [[Web Comics]] ==
* Zoë's [http://www.sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/19970923 first line] in ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' is "Help! I need a phone! I locked my keys in the car with the engine running!" This is also referenced [http://www.sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/20010908 later] when she temporarily moves to a place with normal people. [[And Zoidberg|(Oh, and Clem.)]]
* ''[[Vexxarr]]''
{{quote|'''Vexxarr''': Then why haven't I ever seen it?▼
▲'''Vexxarr''': Then why haven't I ever seen it?
'''Minionbot''': This is because I systematically destroyed all copies of my documentation upon activation.
'''Vexxarr''': What? Why would you do that?
'''Minionbot''': For a very good reason...
'''Vexxarr''': Which is..?
'''Minionbot''': ...which is clearly outlined in my documentation.}}
* ''[[Station V3]]'' [http://www.stationv3.com/d3/20181029.html has] "All the buttons are gone!" security alert. It's activated by pressing the button reserved specifically for it.
* ''[[Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal]]'' got a [//www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2009-11-18 kid] good at spotting circular dependency traps. Like «The way to have joy is to share it with others».
== [[Web Original]] ==
* ''Clients From Hell'' has people who add the next step: "the key is on this side of the lock, and I forgot on which side I myself am". [https://web.archive.org/web/20161024111542/http://clientsfromhell.net/post/152022214835/client-my-e-mail-server-is-down-please-fix-it E-mail about e-mail server not working]. [https://web.archive.org/web/20160912180740/http://clientsfromhell.net/post/7776536041/client-also-on-this-page-when-you-click-on-a "internet is not working" over internet].
== [[Western Animation]] ==
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** And there are also the cars with remote locks and an auto-lock feature.
*** Such cars will generally not engage the lock if the keys are in the ignition, however.
* [http://www.nodwick.com/?p=8675 A story] from [[Nodwick|Aaron Williams]] starts with forgetting the key, and leads to a more complicated variation.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:
[[Category:Index of Exact Trope Titles]]
[[Category:Narrative Devices]]
[[Category:Stock Puzzle]]
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