History Main / BookSafe

* In ''TheAddamsFamily'' movie, the first stage of the secret entrance to the family vault is accessed by pulling a book out from a bookcase. The book's title? ''Greed.'' All of the Addamses' books were like this. ''Gone with the Wind'' causes a tornado when opened, and ''The Sun Also Rises'' emits daylight and the sound of birds.

* In ''Film/TheGame'', Michael Douglas's character keeps a revolver hidden in a copy of ''{{To Kill a Mockingbird}}''. [[hottip:*:By the way, you just lost it.]]

* On ''HouseMD'', House hides a secret stash of his Vicodin painkillers inside a textbook on Lupus, on the grounds that he'll never need the textbook because "It's never Lupus." (Shockingly, in the fourth season, they did get a Lupus case.)

** When Mara Jade finds it, it's because as the Emperor's Hand she knows exactly where to look. When [[XWingSeries Corran Horn]] finds it and a number of other hidden library secrets, it's because he has luck, TheForce, and CanonSue status.

* In the live-action Walt Disney version of ''TheThreeMusketeers'', Aramis (who trained to be a priest) at one point pulls a pistol out of a hollowed-out Bible [[spoiler:at d'Artagnan's execution]] and shoots one of the Cardinal's guards with it.

* This troper once saw a Western film where a large number of rifles were packed in ''crates'' labelled "Bibles".

* This troper lived on a campus with no nearby ATM and no car, so getting money was a hassle. Obviously, just keep a couple hundred on hand in the dorm, but where to hide it? In an empty DVD case for "Tango and Cash".
** This troper did the same thing in a book on Law and Economics.
* This troper once used this to sneakily send candy to a friend at a camp which didn't allow anything edible in care packages.

''hollowed out to fit their rifles''\\
-- ''Violet Hill'' -- {{Coldplay}}

If you're feeling clever, you can make sure that the object you are hiding goes into a hollow book of an appropriate genre or title: A secret locket in a romance novel, a safe key hidden in a book on finance, or the example below from TheMatrix.

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* In the UK, a commercial for the board game Cluedo (aka {{Clue}} in North America) showed Miss Scarlet retrieving the revolver from a hollow book in the library.

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* In ''{{Mai-Otome Zwei}}'', the ''Book of Neptune,'' from which Nagi alleged to have learned about Yuna and the [=CHILDs=], was really a box with the Neptune Emerald GEM inside.

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* In ''TheMatrix'', Neo keeps his illegal software inside a hollow copy of the real-world philosophy text "Simulacra and Simulation" by Jean Baudrillard. A real copy of ''Simulacra'' wouldn't be thick enough to hide that much stuff (it's not a very long book), so one can conclude that the filmmakers specifically worked this reference in as a hint to the nature of Neo's reality.
** The illegal software was hidden in the chapter titled "On Nihilism", again referencing the philosophical themes of the film.
** It's worth noting that ''Simulacra'' and Jean Baudrillard are '''huge''' influences to the Wachowski brothers, as plainly evident in the sequels.
* In ''TheAddamsFamily'' movie, the first stage of the secret entrance to the family vault is accessed by pulling a book out from a bookcase. The book's title? ''Greed.''
** All of the Addamses' books were like this. ''Gone with the Wind'' causes a tornado when opened, and ''The Sun Also Rises'' emits daylight and the sound of birds.

* In the above scene from ''TheShawshankRedemption'', the warden of Shawshank prison opens up the Bible to discover that this is where Andy has been hiding the rock hammer he used to tunnel out of his cell. Salvation, indeed. For that extra touch of irony, the hollow section begins halfway through ''Exodus''.

** Somewhat common trope in Westerns.
** Smuggling rifles in crates marked "Bibles" is TruthInTelevision, if you care to read up on "Beecher's Bibles" on TheOtherWiki.

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[[AC:[[GunsAndGunplayTropes Literature]]]]

*** More like lots of time since he was locked into the room and checking EVERYTHING.

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** Funnily enough, this Troper read that the character having Lupus was a goof and wouldn't have worked medically... meaning that it isn't Lupus, even when it is.
* Eko finds pieces of a Dharma film in a hollowed-out Bible in the second season of ''{{Lost}}''.

* In an episode of ''PushingDaisies'' a nun keeps whiskey in a hollowed-out Bible and takes a QuickNip during a prayer service when no one is looking.
* [[BigEater The eponymous vicar]] of sitcom ''TheVicarOfDibley'' hides chocolate bars inside her Bibles.

* When Blanche was going through her father's belongings in TheGoldenGirls, she came across his Bible, and fondly remembers Sundays at church...before opening it and finding whiskey. Which explains why after every service he would stand up and proclaim "I can lick any man in this church!"
** Later, Rose brings in some encyclopedias in. Blanche tells her to put them with the Bible in the liquor cabinet.
* In a recent episode of TheColbertReport, Colbert faked out the audience by revealing that he had a secret stash of Eggo waffles hidden inside of Sarah Palin's new book (the Palin story had to wait until the waffle shortage story was done).

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* In ''Educating Rita'' the professor hides his whiskey behind a book.

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* ''TheSimpsons'' had an episode where Homer repeatedly took out a flask hidden in a Bible whenever he claimed he needed guidance ("Now I know why they call it the good book.") He freaked out at the end of the episode when it was somehow replaced with a real Bible.

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* In a book lined room at the British musuem, one of the walls is actually a door. You can notice that the gap between the top of the spines and the upper 'shelf' is covered by a leather flap and the key hole is far more substantial than for the glass doors of the real bookshelves.

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* ConversationalTroping in ''MurdochMysteries'':
--->'''George''': I love secret compartments, they're so mysterious. I've been thinking of putting a secret compartment in my book. I mean in the story, not in the actual ... Sir! A secret compartment in the actual book! It could hide a ... a smaller book!

* Alan's first hit in the John Woo movie ''HardBoiled'' is done with a silenced gun hidden in a book of Shakespearean plays.

* A book with a gun in it is hidden within a Library in Hard Boiled. A hitman walks into the library, gets the book and kills his target. Then he replaces the gun and book on the library shelf and walks out. This was apparently done so the hitman would never be armed if he was caught, but the police find the book because of the blood on it.

* In ''Film/TheGame'', Michael Douglas's character keeps a revolver hidden in a copy of ''{{To Kill a Mockingbird}}''. [[supersecretspoiler:By the way, you just lost it.]]

** The illegal software was hidden in the chapter titled, "On Nihilism", again referencing the philosophical themes of the film.

** [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beecher's_Bibles That's because]] it's TruthInTelevision.

->''Priests clutched onto bibles''\\

* In ''{{Trigun}}'', a variation on the standard gun-in-the-bible occurs when that big heavy cross Wolfwood has been lugging around with him everywhere turns out to not only to BE a BFG in its own right but to also CONTAIN a plethora of hand pistols as well. "It's heavy because it's so full of mercy", right...

* Used in one ''LuckyLuke'' story - [[spoiler: a fake priest keeps a revolver in his hollowed-out bible. Lucky suspects him and asks him to read some words from the Good Book...]]

* In ''CatBallou'', Uncle Jed, disguised as a preacher, produces a knife from his bible and uses it to cut the rope on the gallows as it is placed around Cat's neck.
* ''[[{{Aliens}} Alien: Resurrection]]''. A bible contains the modem Call uses to link to the ship's computer, presumably an [[NoPaperFuture electronic book]] with a 'traditional' cover.

* In an episode of ''PushingDaisies'' a nun keeps whiskey in a hollowed-out bible and takes a QuickNip during a prayer service when no one is looking.

* When Blanche was going through her father's belongings in TheGoldenGirls, she came across his bible, and fondly remembers Sundays at church...before opening it and finding whiskey. Which explains why after every service he would stand up and proclaim "I can lick any man in this church!"
** Later, Rose brings in some encyclopedias in. Blanche tells her to put them with the bible in the liquor cabinet.

* In ''Trigun'', a variation on the standard gun-in-the-bible occurs when that big heavy cross Wolfwood has been lugging around with him everywhere turns out to not only to BE a BFG in its own right but to also CONTAIN a plethora of hand pistols as well. "It's heavy because it's so full of mercy", right...

* In Trigun, a variation on the standard gun-in-the-bible occurs when that big heavy cross Wolfwood has been lugging around with him everywhere turns out to not only to BE a BFG in its own right but to also CONTAIN a plethora of hand pistols as well. "It's heavy because it's so full of mercy", right...

->'''Salvation lays [[StealthPun within]]'''\\
-- inscription on a Bible presented to Andy in ''TheShawshankRedemption''

[[caption-width-right:350:"Dear Warden, you were right. [[IronicEcho Salvation lay within.]]"]]

[[quoteright:350:TheShawshankRedemption http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/salva1_4568.jpg]]]]

[[TheShawshankRedemption http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/salva1_4568.jpg]]
[[caption-width:350:"Dear Warden, you were right. [[IronicEcho Salvation lay within.]]"]]

* ConversationaTroping in ''TheMurdochMysteries''

* Used in ''JohnnyDangerously'': as Michael Keaton is being walked to the Chair, in passing each cell along the way each prisoner hands him one component of [[IKEAWeaponry a Tommy gun which he assembles]] whilst walking. The last piece is in the Bible the priest is "reading" from.

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