Basic Trope: Someone has a lot of keys on a chain, and it takes them a bit to figure out which is the one they need.
- Straight: Bethany is looking through her keyring to open her house door. She takes out her back door key and mailbox key before finding the right one.
- Exaggerated: Bethany has twenty keys on a ring, and lists through all of them before finding what she needs.
- Downplayed: Bethany is confused between two identical-looking locker keys.
- Justified:
- The keys are identical.
- Bethany doesn't remember what the key she needs looked like.
- Inverted:
- Bethany gets confused with which lock to put a key into.
- Bethany gets confused even though there's only one key.
- Subverted: Bethany has a giant ring of keys, and she's not very good at distinguishing them. However, she effortlessly picks out one key.
- Double Subverted: But it doesn't fit in the lock, so she looks back through her ring for one that does.
- Parodied: Bethany pulls out items while she looks for her key: "Car key, house key, monkey, turkey, whiskey, key lime pie..."
- Zig-Zagged: Sometimes Bethany finds the right key, and sometimes she doesn't. But it's not certain whether she's actually right until she tries them.
- Averted: Bethany finds the right key on her first try.
- Enforced: "Bethany sure does have a lot of keys. What if we made a joke when she was looking through them?"
- Lampshaded: "I have so many keys! Which is the right one?"
- Invoked: For whatever reason, Bethany gets all her keys to look the same.
- Exploited: Mary the key-maker explicitly models one of Bethany's keys after her others, so she'll get confused and waste time.
- Defied: Bethany labels her keys, color-codes them, or has some sort of helpful mnemonic to remember which is which.
- Discussed: "Look at that keyring! How long do you think it takes Bethany to unlock her front door?"
- Conversed: "Cartoon characters can never seem to find the right keys, can they?"
- Played for Drama: Dangerous Key Fumble
Front door, back door, back garden, mailbox... ah, here it is! Key Confusion!
