History Main / MyopicArchitecture

* In ''Film/{{RED}}'', Frank Moses circumvents a password-protected lock that he describes as "unbreakable" by kicking a hole in the flimsy drywall next to it and opening the door from the inside.

* Portable safes. If a thief gets into your house without raising an alarm, there's not much stopping him from just walking off with the whole thing. Many of these safes are designed to be bolted to the floor, but otherwise [[NiceJobBreakingItHero you've just made things into one-stop shopping for the thief.]] Also, some safes aren't really designed to protect from thieves at all - they're essentially a fireproof box to guard important documents from damage, not theft.

* [[CoolBoat German battleships]] ''Bismarck'' and ''Tirpitz'' had been built with tremendously durable hulls and armor, able to survive and move under their own power [[MadeOfIron after a direct hit from said Tallboy bomb]]. The direct hit had been a necessity since their armored decks were mostly impervious to standard [[UsefulNotes/BritsWithBattleships Royal Navy]] 500lb and 1600lb bombs. Their stern construction, however, made it impossible to steer only via propellers and left most of the rudders and steering engines poorly protected. The Kriegsmarine knew that after ''Bismarck'' sea trials, but [[TemptingFate did not expect it to hamper the ship's fighting ability]]. Unfortunately it did, as a single lucky shot from a torpedo broke the rudders and left ''Bismarck'' a sitting duck in her first and last raid.

** While the book describes the parapets as being high enough that only a tall man could look over them, with spaces between them that allow for the shooting of arrows, the merlons of the battlements in the film reach only up to mid-chest at most, exposing them to the attackers' arrows. Also, the fact that the Deeping Wall has only a single tower along its considerable length, and the battlements aren't machicolated to allow the defenders to shoot directly beneath them, means there would be blind spots and hardly any ability to hit the attackers with flanking fire. Granted, the wall curves inward in a way that eliminates the visual blind spot, but it is long enough that effective flanking fire with bows of limited range would be rather difficult.

** The Hornburg itself has only one relatively flimsy gate that the Uruk-hai have to smash through before they're inside and able to wreak havoc. If it had a proper gatehouse like most real castles did, they would have had to break through a portcullis as well, and then found themselves faced with another gate and portcullis while being funneled into a small passage where the defenders could shoot them from holes in both sides and the ceiling. The arrangement of concentric walls does incorporate a very good idea from real-life castles, which is having the gate in the outer wall lead into a 90-degree turn that would be difficult to fit a ram through, channeling the attackers down a long path where the defenders could shoot them from the battlements on either side and then having the gate of the second wall be 90 degrees at the end of that. However, the inside of the outer walls are not crenellated to take full advantage of this, and most gallingly, there ''is'' no gate restricting passage through the inner walls; instead there's a huge frickin' archway that anyone could ride right through, which almost defeats the point of having an inner layer of walls in the first place!

* This is the logic behind at least part of a few levels in ''VideoGame/PAYDAYTheHeist'' and [[VideoGame/Payday2 its sequel]]. "Panic Room" concerns an otherwise-unused apartment building that has been turned into a haven for criminal activity, complete with a big panic room to stash all their valuables in that the crew wouldn't normally be able to break into. The plan, as such, is to cut through the supports holding the panic room in place, blow out a big hole to the roof, and fly the whole panic room out via helicopter. "Counterfit" likewise has the people you're stealing from keeping the plates used to print their counterfeit money in a secure safe that you normally wouldn't be able to drill or blast through from the outside - but that only applies to the door. The sides can be drilled through just fine, after which the gang fills the safe with water, stuffs C4 inside, and blows that, using the water pressure to blow out the door.

This is CripplingOverspecialization applied to architecture. A designer puts immense effort and resources into a structure, most often a defensive point such as a wall, door, or window, but fails to notice a large weakness in the design that makes all of this easy to circumvent. The most common flaw being that for all that the door itself is indestructible, the wall around it is less so. This is especially so in Chinese and Japanese media where many walls are made out of paper. Often, the floor will also be vulnerable to burrowing. The door itself may not be that hard to open, especially if WeHaveTheKeys. Often played for laughs if the way through the apparently impenetrable defense is particularly obvious or easy. Sometimes serves as a SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome moment for whoever thought that they or their stuff would be safe in such a place.

This is CripplingOverspecialization applied to architecture. A designer puts immense effort and resources into a structure, most often a defensive point such as a wall, door, or window, but fails to notice a large weakness in the design that makes all of this easy to circumvent. The most common flaw being that for all that the door itself is indestructible, the wall around it is less so. This is especially so in Chinese and Japanese media where many walls are made out of paper. Often, the floor will also be vulnerable to burrowing. The door itself may not be that hard to open, especially if WeHaveTheKeys. Often played for laughs if the way through the apparently impenetrable defense is particularly obvious or easy. Sometimes serves as a RealityEnsues moment for whoever thought that they or their stuff would be safe in such a place.

* ''[[VisualNovel/HatofulBoyfriend Hatoful Boyfriend: Holiday Star]]'': Sakuya insists that a room's security is flawless and so he can display an item legendary thieves are seeking without fear. None of the other characters are convinced or surprised when, indeed, the room is broken into, and they react with exasperation finding that the security was impeccable... around the ''door''. Despite a window, and most characters in the game being capable of flight.

* As the [[https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCm9K6rby98W8JigLoZOh6FQ Lock Picking Lawyer]] demonstrates it is shockingly common for locks, including ones that sold by major companies, to have a serious design flaws that allow them to be easily bypassed without even using lock picking tools. There also are plenty of locks that are very difficult to pick but are easier to break, or are difficult break and don't have any bypasses but are easily picked with common lockpicks.

* Many of the locks reviewed by [[https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCm9K6rby98W8JigLoZOh6FQ Lock Picking Lawyer]] display this trope. It is shockingly common for locks, including ones that sold by major companies, to have a serious design flaws that allow them to be easily bypassed without even using lock picking tools.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheNewAdventuresOfWinnieThePooh'' during a western themed fantasy sequence. Pooh is thrown into A jail cell and somehow every single character is too stupid to notice that the bars are wide enough to easily step through and the back wall is completely missing. When Pooh is broken out of jail by Tigger, they even leave through the missing wall, but not before unlocking the door first, somehow not realizing they could have done that before.

* [[CoolBoat German battleships]] ''Bismarck'' and ''Tirpitz'' had been built with tremendously durable hulls and armor, able to survive and move under their own power [[MadeOfIron after a direct hit from the said Tallboy bomb]]. The direct hit had been a necessity since their armored decks were mostly impervious to standard [[UsefulNotes/BritsWithBattleships Royal Navy]] 500lb and 1600lb bombs. Their stern construction, however, made it impossible to steer only via propellers and left most of the rudders and steering engines poorly protected. The Kriegsmarine knew that after ''Bismarck'' sea trials, but [[TemptingFate did not expect it to hamper the ship's fighting ability]]. Unfortunately it did, as a single lucky shot from a torpedo broke the rudders and left ''Bismarck'' a sitting duck in her first and last raid.

* ''Podcast/TheMagnusArchive'': Jurgen Leitner dedicated his life to collecting the world's [[TomeOfEldritchLore most dangerous magical books]] and building a library capable of containing them. [[spoiler:Unfortunately he spent so much time designing the place to make sure nothing could get out, he never considered the possibility that someone could break ''in''.]]

* Portable safes. If a thief gets into your house without raising an alarm, there's not much stopping him from just walking off with the whole thing. Many of these safes are designed to be bolted to the floor, but otherwise [[NiceJobBreakingItHero you've just made things into one-stop shopping for the thief.]]

->''"The materials used to create a lock are of utmost importance. Shoddy brass or copper will give way to a well placed kick, thereby rendering the lock itself useless. I recommend steel over iron when choosing a material. More robust materials tend to be prohibitively expensive and necessitate the door being made of similar metals. I have been chagrined to stumble across the shattered shell of a wooden chest, its dwarven lock intact and still locked."''

* In the first episode of ''LightNovel/LordElMelloiIICaseFiles'', Waver and Melvin are locked up in a prison with magic-proofed door. After briefly catching up with Melvin, Waver procedes to simply pull the hinges out of the walls and gently push the door out of its frame.

* A running gag in the ''ComicBook/LuckyLuke'' album "The Daily Star" resolves around a sheriff who takes great pride in the fact that the bars of the cell in his office are unbreakable, which he claims will prevent any escape attempts. Although he is right about the strength of the bars, the rest of the office is not that strong so it’s still very much a CardBoardPrison. At the end of the story, the entire sheriff office is destroyed with only the bars still standing.

** There is a strip where Hagar returns from a plundering, handing Helga a large, well-crafted castle-style lock, noting that she's been worried about people breaking into their house. She's initially overjoyed, until she asks where he got it. "Oh, it wasn't too hard -- it only took me five seconds to rip it out."

* In the ''VideoGame/{{Touhou}}'' fanfiction ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11563136/71/FREAKIN-GENSOKYO FREAKIN GENSOKYO]]'', barriers and locked doors sometimes block the way deeper into a building. The walls around the door, however are usually not as strong. Brad takes advantage of this by breaking through them with an enchanted plant hanger.

** The Hornburg itself has only one relatively flimsy gate that the Uruk-hai have to smash through before they're inside and able to wreak havoc. If it had a proper gatehouse like most real castles did, they would have had to break through a portcullis as well, and then found themselves faced with another gate and portcullis while being funneled into a small passage where the defenders could shoot them from holes in both sides and the ceiling. The arrangement of concentric walls does incorporate a very good idea from real-life castles, which is having the gate in the outer wall lead into a 90-degree turn that would be difficult to fit a ram through, channeling the attackers down a long path where the defenders could shoot them from the battlements on either side, and then having the gate of the second wall be 90 degrees at the end of that. However, the inside of the outer walls are not crenellated to take full advantage of this, and most gallingly, there ''is'' no gate restricting passage through the inner walls; instead there's a huge frickin' archway that anyone could ride right through, which almost defeats the point of having an inner layer of walls in the first place!

** A wide culvert runing right through the bottom of the wall allows the Deeping-stream to pass out. Having this weak point is a pretty enormous oversight, and since the builders of the fortress were clearly capable of great feats of engineering, there should have been more than one way for them to avoid this: one would be for them to divert the stream through underground pipes; another which might have actually enhanced the defensibility of the walls would have been to dig a proper moat for the stream to fill up and let the culvert be underwater with iron bars blocking it. However there is no moat, the culvert is accessible from the surface, and if there are any bars across the opening then the author doesn't mention them, making it sound like it's wide enough for an orc to fit through. While most of the attacking orcs with scaling ladders and grappling hooks are keeping the defenders focused on the top of the wall, some of them creep like rats through the culvert and get inside, requiring the Westfold-men to block up the inside of the culvert with stones under Gimli's direction as soon as they can. Why they didn't take the opportunity to block it up with rubble ''before'' the battle when they had the chance is left as an exercise for the reader. The rubble keeps the orcs out for a little while, but then the orcs blast through the blockage using the "fire of Orthranc" (presumably some kind of bomb), which also makes the hole much larger. The attacking hordes stream in and take the wall, forcing its defenders to either fall back to the Hornburg if they can, or retreat into the Deep if they can't.
** As for the Hornburg, it is accessed by a high causeway that helpfully forces the enemy to come a few at a time under the defenders' fire. However, the fact that the builders didn't go the extra mile and put in a drawbridge makes this defense much less effective, and contributes to the orcs being able to bust their way in with rams and explosives.

** The main gate of ''Redwall Abbey'' is large and thick, impervious to even the most dedicated of sieges. Basically, not one invading vermin horde has ever gotten through it. The tiny wicker side-gate, on the other hand, has been breached by countless invading hordes over the seasons (or the youngest of the Abbey's children are forever escaping through it into the woods and into the villain's clutches), probably accounting for every successful invasion of the abbey. This is presumably intentional, since it would be easy to station three well-armed, armoured guards there during a siege to hack up any single file intruders who tried to get in. Unfortunately, being peaceful monks and villagers (nearly every book is set so far apart in time almost no one remembers times of war), the Redwall inhabitants never think of that.

* This trope turns up in the Literature/PhryneFisher book ''Death Before Wicket'' in relation to a safe that was cracked. It's a very big, impressive, well-built safe... except that the back ''isn't'', because the safe was made to be set in a wall. The present owners purchased it from a deceased estate and didn't know about the intended setting, so they simply left it on a desk, where the thief easily found it and removed the back.

* A common conceit in Michael Weston's voice-overs on ''Series/BurnNotice'' is that people are more apt to reinforce doors than the nearby walls. Indeed, he uses this in the very first episode against Sugar, his downstairs neighbor who is also an obnoxious drug dealer. Michael notes that even a low end drug dealer will probably have a reinforced door for extra security. So when Sugar is standing directly behind said reinforced door with a gun so he can shoot Michael if he makes it through, Michael opts to go through the perfectly ordinary wall to the side instead.

* In one episode of ''Series/TheMentalist'', the VictimOfTheWeek was killed via exposure to a deadly virus kept in a high security vault accessed by retina scan - which didn't work right and would let in anybody who presented their eye for scanning.

* In ''The Monkey King'' televised miniseries Nicholas Orton (Thomas Gibson) a FishOutOfTemporalWater [[TemporalParadox teaches Confucius a lesson of his he learned]], never make a indestructible door without a indestructible wall around it.

* Happens more often than you think in Tabletop {{Role Playing Game}}s; savvy players always check hinges, floors and walls when attempting a DungeonBypass, and inexperienced [=GMs=] don't always plan for this (though some crafty [=GMs=] may actually invoke this to lead the players into a trap, ''especially'' when dealing with a group of savvy players). The oldest standby is the fighter as the back up lockpicker. If the thief can't make his lock picking check, the fighter can always bash down the door. Of course, a well-designed dungeon will make sure the noise alerts monsters and sets up ambushes.

* This is the logic behind at least part of a few levels in ''VideoGame/PAYDAYTheHeist'' and [[VideoGame/Payday2 its sequel]]. "Panic Room" concerns an otherwise-unused apartment building which has been turned into a haven for criminal activity, complete with a big panic room to stash all their valuables in that the crew wouldn't normally be able to break into. The plan, as such, is to cut through the supports holding the panic room in place, blow out a big hole to the roof, and fly the whole panic room out via helicopter. "Counterfit" likewise has the people you're stealing from keeping the plates used to print their counterfeit money in a secure safe that you normally wouldn't be able to drill or blast through from the outside - but that only applies to the door. The sides can be drilled through just fine, after which the gang fills the safe with water, stuffs C4 inside, and blows that, using the water pressure to blow out the door.

* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheFantasticFour1967'', Diablo is running from Thing and retreats into a panic room. He assumes he's safe, since the door is made of titanium, which Thing is not strong enough to break. When Thing reaches the room, he just breaks through the wall.

** In the episode "Onion Friend", Steven tries to keep [[TheGadfly Onion]] from stealing a bag of chips by blocking the door to his room. So, Onion just jumps out the screen window instead.

* The World War II UsefulNotes/MaginotLine is an example in the popular imagination which was actually a subversion; it was a wise investment of resources which did exactly what it was supposed to - namely, forcing the German forces to have to go around the border. Unfortunately, the French Army had three largely unavoidable issues which had nothing to do with Maginot.

* Computer Security is pretty much governed by this trope. Unlike other security systems an attacker doesn't get hurt if they fail to break in, so they simply try every conceivable way into a system. And unfortunately, because some of these ways are so outlandish the designers never considered testing it, such as [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozIKwGt38LQ using a laser to make Google Assistant think you just told it to open the front door]].

** Similar to the Cryptography above, there is what's called "Social Engineering". It doesn't matter how good your physical or electronic security is, if the people using it can be tricked into giving away secrets or clearance. A very simple example: You can have a door that requires fingerprint scans, iris scanners, a twelve digit password, and a vocal print identification, but then you hold the door open for a [[BavarianFireDrill thief whose hands are full of important-looking files.]] Companies who process a lot of data are constantly on the lookout for new ways of circumventing their data security, most of which come down to social engineering.

* [[CoolBoat German battleships]] ''Bismarck'' and ''Tirpitz'' had been built with tremendously durable hulls and armor, able to survive and move under their own power [[MadeOfIron after a direct hit from the said Tallboy bomb]]. The direct hit had been a necessity, since their armored decks were mostly impervious to standard [[UsefulNotes/BritsWithBattleships Royal Navy]] 500lb and 1600lb bombs. Their stern construction, however, made it impossible to steer only via propellers, and left most of the rudders and steering engines poorly protected. The Kriegsmarine knew that after ''Bismarck'' sea trials, but [[TemptingFate did not expect it to hamper the ship's fighting ability]]. Unfortunately it did, as a single lucky shot from a torpedo broke the rudders and left ''Bismarck'' a sitting duck in her first and last raid.

* In ''Film/{{Sneakers}}'', Bishop is confronted with an electronic door lock that was installed soon before his break-in. He radios for help; the team is not happy; and after a few moments of silence while (only) he hears the plan, he simply kicks the door open.

** The main gate of ''Redwall Abbey'' is large and thick, impervious to even the most dedicated of sieges. Basically, not one invading vermin horde has ever gotten through it. The tiny wicker side-gate, on the other hand, has been breached by countless invading hordes over the seasons (or the youngest of the Abbey's children are forever escaping through it into the woods and into the villain's clutches), probably accounting for every successful invasion of the abbey. This is presumably intentional, since it would be easy to station three well-armed, armoured guards there during a siege to hack up any single file intruders who tried to get in. Unfortunately, being peaceful monk and villagers (nearly every book is set so far apart in time almost no one remembers times of war), the Redwall inhabitants never think of that.

* In ''Theatre/AVeryPotterMusical'', Ron assures everyone that Voldemort can't get in, because he's barricaded the door. [[AbsurdlyIneffectiveBarricade Seconds later, Voldemort enters through a curtain right next to the door.]]

* [[CoolBoat German battleships]] ''Bismarck'' and ''Tirpitz'' had been built with tremendously durable hulls and armor, able to survive and move under their own power [[MadeOfIron after a direct hit from the said Tallboy bomb]]. The direct hit had been a necessity, since their armored decks were mostly impervious to standard [[UsefulNotes/BritsWithBattleships Royal Navy]] 500lb and 1600lb bombs. Their stern construction, however, made it impossible to steer only via propellers, and left most of the rudders and steering engines poorly protected. The Kriegsmarine knew that after ''Bismarck'' sea trials, but [[TemptingFate did not expect it to hamper the ship's fighting ability]]. Unfortunately it did, as a single lucky shot from a torpedo broke the rudders and left ''Bismarck'' a sitting duck in her first raid.

* In one episode of ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'', the Team Rocket trio traps a group of Pokémon under a dome made of "absolutely, positively unbreakable" glass. However, the dome itself isn't un''shake''able, and so Ash and the captives are able to dislodge it.

** Strange's own Sanctum Sanctorum is guarded by warding spells linked to its characteristic round window. A band of his enemies once gained access by breaking down the wood of the windowframe, causing the whole thing to fall apart.

** The Hornburg itself has only one relatively flimsy gate that the Uruk-hai have to smash through before they're inside and able to wreak havok. If it had a proper gatehouse like most real castles did, they would have had to break through a portcullis as well, and then found themselves faced with another gate and portcullis while being funneled into a small passage where the defenders could shoot them from holes in both sides and the ceiling. The arrangement of concentric walls does incorporate a very good idea from real-life castles, which is having the gate in the outer wall lead into a 90-degree turn that would be difficult to fit a ram through, channeling the attackers down a long path where the defenders could shoot them from the battlements on either side, and then having the gate of the second wall be 90 degrees at the end of that. However, the inside of the outer walls are not crenellated to take full advantage of this, and most gallingly, there ''is'' no gate restricting passage through the inner walls; instead there's a huge frickin' archway that anyone could ride right through, which almost defeats the point of having an inner layer of walls in the first place!

** A wide culvert runing right through the bottom of the wall allows the Deeping-stream to pass out. Having this weak point is a pretty enormous oversight, and since the builders of the fortress were clearly capable of great feats of engineering there should have been more than one way for them to avoid this: one would be for them to divert the stream through underground pipes; another which might have actually enhanced the defensibility of the walls would have been to dig a proper moat for the stream to fill up and let the culvert be underwater with iron bars blocking it. However there is no moat, the culvert is accessible from the surface, and if there are any bars across the opening then the author doesn't mention them, making it sound like it's wide enough for an orc to fit through. While most of the attacking orcs with scaling ladders and grappling hooks are keeping the defenders focused on the top of the wall, some of them creep like rats through the culvert and get inside, requiring the Westfold-men to block up the inside of the culvert with stones under Gimli's direction as soon as they can. Why they didn't take the opportunity to block it up with rubble ''before'' the battle when they had the chance is left as an exercise for the reader. The rubble keeps the orcs out for a little while, but then the orcs blast through the blockage using the "fire of Orthranc" (presumably some kind of bomb), which also makes the hole much larger. The attacking hordes stream in and take the wall, forcing its defenders to either fall back to the Hornburg if they can, or retreat into the Deep if they can't.

** The main gate of ''Redwall Abbey'' is large and thick, impervious to even the most dedicated of sieges. Basically, not one invading vermin horde has ever gotten through it. The tiny wicker side-gate, on the other hand, has been breached by countless invading hordes over the seasons (or the youngest of the Abbey's children are forever escaping into the woods and into the villain's clutches), probably accounting for every successful invasion of the abbey. This is presumably intentional, since it would be easy to station three well-armed, armoured guards there during a siege to hack up any single file intruders who tried to get in. Unfortunately, being peaceful monk and villagers (nearly every book is set so far apart in time almost no one remembers times of war), the Redwall inhabitants never think of that.

[[folder:Web Original]]
* At one point in ''Roleplay/RubyQuest'', Ruby and Tom come across a door locked with a keycard reader. However, the door is made of wood, so the players just have Tom smash it to pieces with his crowbar.
* ''Podcast/TheMagnusArchive'': Jurgen Leitner dedicated his life to collecting the world's [[TomeOfEldritchLore most dangerous magical books]] and building a library capable of containing them. [[spoiler:Unfortunately he spent so much time designing the place to make sure nothing could get out, he never considered the possibility that someone could break ''in''.]]
[[/folder]]

** One scene in the nuke plant in "Last Exit to Springfield" involved Burns and Smithers going through several layers of increasing security to reach a control room, which was seen to also feature an ill-fitting, flapping screen door leading directly to the parking lot, through which Burns has to shoo away a stray dog.