History Main / ThePassWordIsAlwaysSwordfish

* Neopets.com has banned the following passwords: password, neopets, pokemon, neopet, username. Four of them are obvious, and apparently Franchise/{{Pokemon}} is just that popular.

** One will note that not only is this password easy to remember, but it is [[FridgeBrilliance ridiculously hard to guess]]. Score one for the blondes.
** This is besides how you can actually make good passwords in reality--passwords that are easy to remember for humans and realistically impossible to crack for computers. Unfortunately, most password protections do not allow such really long passwords. Instead humans are forced to remember ridiculous capitalization and numbers in their passwords, things that computers are good at, but which are hard to remember for humans.

There is a dramatic purpose to this. A character's password can give a glimpse into their mind, by showing what person, thing or concept is occupying their thoughts. Also, it allows for dramatic scenes where the heroes try to guess the villain's password based on what they know about him.

** In UsefulNotes/NaziGermany, a safe-cracker would dial in UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler's birthday first when breaking into a German officer's safe, knowing that most of the time, it was all you needed to open it.

* In ''[[Franchise/WinnieThePooh My Friends Tigger & Pooh: Tigger & Pooh and a Musical Too]]'', Tigger failed to guess Rabbit's password which would have allowed him to cross a line dividing the Hundred Acre Wood. Beaver then correctly guessed Tigger's password, which was "Tigger."

[[folder:Films — Live-Action]]

* In both Japanese and English versions of ''Anime/{{Wolverine}}'', the password on Logan's handheld computer is simply his name. Granted, it was a voice-activated password, but Yukio's "Seriously?" reaction is still the same.

* In ''Anime/{{Danganronpa 3}}'', a researcher's password to his computer is "curry rice". It's his favorite food, and it's also posted on the computer monitor. His research involves [[spoiler:''human experimentation'']], so...unwise choices there.

[[folder:Films — Animation]]

* During the heist at the gala in ''WesternAnimation/TheBadGuys'', a part of the operation involves getting the code to a vault that has a randomly generated 5 digit number from the chief of police. After Piranha has to instigate a dance number to prevent Snake from getting caught, he grabs it from the suitcase it's hidden inside of... and it's revealed to be '12345', much to his ire.

[[folder:Films — Live-Action]]

* A Dutch security researcher reported in October 2020 that he was able to log into Creator/DonaldTrump's Website/{{Twitter}} account by guessing the password "maga2020!". He and his team had done likewise in 2016, by guessing the password [[Series/TheApprentice "yourefired"]].

* Before Administrivia/TheGoogleIncident caused anonymous editing to be axed, the password to edit Website/TVTropes articles without an account was "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS4E5BeerBad foamy]]", which the password pop-up outright said. The only point was to keep spambots out.

* In the ''VisualNovel/HigurashiWhenTheyCry'' fanfic [[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4923817 Redemption]], the password to some information so important that its original finder died for it is... "Umi" (Japanese for "ocean"). Taking this to real IdiotPlot levels, the team attempting to crack the password are stuck for ''months'' because they only guess English words. And they ''know'' the password is three letters, but no-one points out that [[WritersCannotDoMath 26³ possibilities could be brute-forced by hand in less than a day]].

* In ''VisualNovel/SchoolDays'', Setsuna is able to reconfigure Makoto's cell phone by guessing correctly, at the very first try, that he used his birthday as password.

* ''VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorney'': Manfred von Karma, ''the'' AmoralAttorney, sets his ATM number as "0001". Why? Because he's [[{{Narcissist}} number one]], of course.

''[Later...]''\\

* The PAL (Permissive Action Links) arming mechanisms on USAF bombs were given the ultra-secure code of 0000000 until the late 1970s (see below). None were ever accidentally armed. That one was intentional as they had so many other layers of security in place they decided the arming code was superfluous and essentially disabled it. Specifically, the PAL codes ''for [=ICBMs=]'' were always blank. Since these were huge missiles housed in dedicated silos out in the middle of nowhere, with a TwoKeyedLock and numerous site safety features (read: trespassers will be shot), it's easy to see why they thought a password would be redundant. Tactical and other portable weapon systems had and used actual codes.

-->'''Dark Helmet:''' So the combination is 1 2 3 4 5? That's the [[StupidestThingIveEverHeard stupidest combination I've ever heard in my life]]! The kind of thing an idiot would have on his luggage!\\

* Physicist, continual prankster, and hobbyist safecracker UsefulNotes/RichardFeynman discovered that many of the safes at Los Alamos during the war (which, after all, was only ''the place where they designed the atomic bomb'') had been left on their default combinations. Not just that, but if you casually leaned against an open safe you could feel the last of the three numbers. Moreover, though the safe offered the numbers 00-99 the number 03 could be opened by 01-05, thus instead of 100x100x100 possibilities there where only 20x20x20, or, for birthdays, 3x7x9 (assuming everyone was under 45). AND passnumbers were often written down. The "obvious" response of his bosses when he told them how terrible their security was: A memo to everybody saying "Don't let Feynman near your safe". His boss discovered Feynman's safe-cracking skills after he broke into all the filing cabinets in his office and left silly notes in them. The first one said "I borrowed document no. LA4312 - Feynman the safecracker". The second said "This one was no harder to open than the other one - Wise Guy". The third said, "When the combinations are all the same, one is no harder to open than another - Same Guy". Guess which order the boss found the notes in.

* For decades, British Nuclear Submarines had no security on the launch control panel aside from a bicycle lock, set to 0000. The rationale was that any gentlemen allowed in the navy would know better. Without any safety mechanisms at all, no nuclear device was ever launched or tampered with.

** In UsefulNotes/NaziGermany, a safe-cracker would dial in [[UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler Hitler]]'s birthday first when breaking into a German officer's safe, knowing that most of the time, it was all you needed to open it.

* ''Film/{{Spaceballs}}'':

* In ''WebAnimation/HelluvaBoss'', Blitzo and Moxxie get caught by [[TheMenInBlack D.H.O.R.K.S.]]. Millie and Loona have to bust them out, but they need the passcode. What's the passcode? Millie notices that of all the possible numbers, the "1" button is the only one with any wear and tear on it, so they try "1111". Sure enough, they nail it on the first guess.

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Gargoyles}}'', the trope is [[SubvertedTrope subverted.]] Demona realizes that the heroes have devised a way to stop her latest plan to [[KillEmAll destroy every human in New York]] and interferes with their efforts by breaking into [[MagnificentBastard Xanatos's]] computer, sabotaging it, and then changing the access code. Ultimately, no one is able to guess the password, and it takes some magical interference from the [[TheFairFolk Weird Sisters]] to get her to tell them. The fact that Demona was the only member of her clan still awake for the past few centuries ''could'' have given it away--the heroes simply didn't have enough time to make any educated guesses:

* During UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, in UsefulNotes/NaziGermany, a safe-cracker would dial in [[UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler Hitler]]'s birthday first when breaking into a German officer's safe, knowing that most of the time, it was all you needed to open it.
* During World War II, Allied codebreakers could rely on Enigma (the German encryption system, which they thought was unbreakable) messages having easily-guessable initial settings. The Germans also overused Enigma, which gave the Allies more things to work with. For instance, the weather forecast was broadcast every morning, encrypted, and started with the word 'Wetter'. And in a fit of brilliance, the Brits actually planted mines in plain sight of the Germans, so they could later intercept the encrypted broadcasts ('Danger, mines!'), and use it to decode all other messages sent that day.
** What gave the Enigma code away was a message that cryptanalyst Mavis Lever discovered did not contain a single instance of the letter L. Because by that point it was known that the Enigma machine would never substitute a letter for itself, it was immediately obvious that a bored operator had simply hit the nearest key on the machine while sending a dummy message to confuse the British, and in doing so gave away the machine's settings for that day. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis_of_the_Enigma#Operating_shortcomings The Other Wiki]] has a list of such mistakes.

* In the early days of NORAD, the password you needed to control the NORAD computers was...[[WhatWereYouThinking NORAD]]. It's a wonder WorldWarIII didn't break out.
* The PAL (Permissive Action Links) arming mechanisms on USAF bombs were given the ultra-secure code of 0000000 until the late '70s (see below). None were ever accidentally armed. That one was intentional as they had so many other layers of security in place they decided the arming code was superfluous and essentially disabled it. Specifically, the PAL codes ''for [=ICBMs=]'' were always blank. Since these were huge missiles housed in dedicated silos out in the middle of nowhere, with a TwoKeyedLock and numerous site safety features (read: trespassers will be shot), it's easy to see why they thought a password would be redundant. Tactical and other portable weapon systems had and used actual codes.

* During UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, in UsefulNotes/NaziGermany, a safe-cracker would dial in Hitler's birthday first when breaking into a German officer's safe knowing that most of the time that it was all you need to open it.

* What gave the Enigma code away was a message that cryptanalyst Mavis Lever discovered did not contain a single instance of the letter L. Because by that point it was known that the Enigma machine would never substitute a letter for itself, it was immediately obvious that a bored operator had simply hit the nearest key on the machine while sending a dummy message to confuse the British, and in doing so gave away the machine's settings for that day. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis_of_the_Enigma#Operating_shortcomings The Other Wiki]] has a list of such mistakes.
* On Hitler's birthday, almost anyone with a coding machine sent a happy birthday message to the Führer, leading to a lot of easy-to-decode messages for the crackers to work with.

* Supposedly, the hacker who cracked Paris Hilton's phone in 2005 did so by finding the "Forgot your password" option. The question: Who is your favorite pet? That's right, Paris Hilton's phone was protected by a name that's been in the tabloids for years.

* On the Penn Jillette radio show, Penn's co-host, usually Michael Goudeau, is tasked with finding emails from listeners to be read on the show. One day, there was a guest co-host who kept getting inundated with password prompts, at which point Penn reminded him "the password to everything is Dawkins"... on the air. For a few hours, listeners could log into the show's Google Mail account, until a benevolent fan changed the password and made Penn promise to pick a better one.

* When former ''Series/NineteenKidsAndCounting'' star Josh Duggar was arrested for possession of child pornography in 2021, one of the details to come out was that his passwords were almost all the same, and just a series of numbers representing his birthday. This made it very easy for law enforcement to access his files.[[note]] And was ultimately used against him in court, as his legal defense was that you couldn't prove that the partition where the illegal material was hidden ''wasn't'' the invention of someone else with access to his computer, except the password for it was the one he used for everything else.[[/note]]

* In ''Machinima/RedVsBlue'', Sarge of the Red Army seems to be prone to this.

* In episode 30 of ''Machinima/FreemansMind'', Freeman encounters a keypad outside a launch facility. After fiddling with it a bit, he gets in with the password "1234". He immediately {{lampshade|Hanging}}s the stupidity of that particular password:

* ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'':

* Before Administrivia/TheGoogleIncident caused anonymous editing to be axed, the password to edit Wiki/TVTropes articles without an account was "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS4E5BeerBad foamy]]", which the password pop-up outright said. The only point was to keep spambots out.

* ''ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogIDW'': The password to Eggman's computer network is [[Letters2Numbers "H4T3TH4TH3DGEH0G"]]. Amy and Sonic share smug looks at that.

* In the ''Thanks a Lot, Creator/MiltonJones'' episode "Space Age in Aisle Three", Milton gains access to Elon Musk's Mars base by entering an apparently random string of numbers and symbols. He then explains that people often use the names of their kids.