In Real Life, doors are big, sturdy, unwieldy, heavy, and often securely fastened to their hinges. They are used to block or allow entry to different parts of a structure, and their use as weapons is generally not even considered beyond slamming them in someone's face in a fit of anger.
In fiction-land, however, those same traits above lend doors to be perfect Improvised Weapons for The Big Guy or other characters with Super-Strength: They're big, so they are not so easily dodged; they're sturdy, so they aren't going to break after short use and make for excellent improvised tower shields (some doors are outright Made of Indestructium); they come with handles to alleviate the whole 'unwieldy' aspect (and unlike Real Life, these handles almost never break); they are heavy, so you can make sure any blow you strike inflicts just as much blunt damage as a bona-fide Shield Bash; and so omnipresent that if you are in any location with a building, you can be assured there's a door within reach should you need a weapon.
Compare The Door Slams You, which is comedic and unintentional for the characters; Door Judo, which is when a character tries to break down a door by charging at it only for the door to open and leaving said character Too Fast to Stop; and Tae Kwon Door for when a door isn't wielded, but still recognized for its ability to inflict damage. If it's a car door, see Toyota Tripwire.
Examples:
- Lanfeust: Hebus the troll tries to break open a steel porticullis, and when that fails, to bend it. Cut to a guard leaning against the gears smugly mentioning he'll never get through, then back to Hebus simply grabbing and then lifting the grate, pulling the unfortunate guard's body into the gears as the mechanism is reversed.
- In the Judge Dredd story The Pit, Dredd and some other judges are trapped in a traffic-monitoring station in the middle of a sector-wide riot. At one point the rioters manage to break in via the upper floor, causing one judge to exclaim "They're in!" Dredd picks up the door the rioters just blew off its hinges, scoops up half a dozen of them with it and throws them off the roof, replying "They're out again!"
- Coming Home in the Dark: At one point, when Tubs goes to open the back door of the car, Hoaggie kicks it open into Tubs' face, sending him to the ground and giving Hoaggie a chance to get away.
- Elves (2017): After Colin's been strangled by his assailant, said assailant put Colin's head into his car's door and slams it shut on him multiple times to kill him.
- Killer Under the Bed: Kilee uses a closet door to knock Mr. McCabe unconscious.
- In The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Ian Malcolm uses a door as a shield against a velociraptor.
- Mr. Nice Guy (starring Jackie Chan) has Chan's titular character caught in a Scooby-Dooby Doors-style chase, while beating up his pursuers by closing doors on their hands or faces, though Chan does get doors slammed on himself a few times. It's as funny as it's impressive
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- This happens one time in the Codex Alera series when some characters are trying to hold a room against some taken Canim (giant zombie wolfmen), they are about to break through the door, so one character decides to break the door down in such a way that it falls outwards and crushes one of the Canim.
- A Hero's War: When Morey's party finds an ancient facility with a door made of crysteel, they break down the wall and take the door with them as a very effective shield.
- Bayonetta 3 introduces a weapon called Tartarus. Normally it's wielded like a pair of bulky tonfas with built-in gatling guns, but its halves can be joined to create a heavy door which can be used as a ramming weapon, a portal to summon other weapons, or a vacuum hole that sucks in enemies.
- In Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, the player can rip off car doors to shield against a drone swarm in the opening mission.
- In Dark Souls III, the Giant Door Shield is a pair of doors used as shields. The wielder dual wields a pair of doors to block incoming attacks, slam their enemies, crush them by shutting both doors, or charging toward them while negating most attacks.
- This was a more-refined variation of a pair of individual greatshields from Dark Souls II called Orma's Greatshield and Reeve's Greatshield, which could be dual wielded in Power Stance to generate a similar "slam" attack.
- Discussed Trope in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance in Shinnon and Gatrie's A support, which overlaps with Noodle Incident since we never got to saw it in action.
Gatrie: What about the other day, when I bought the Ultimate Shield?!Shinnon: Gatrie, that was a castle gate.
- Braum from League of Legends wields a massive shield that was once a door. There's a story behind it: A devious troll tricked Ornn, the demi-god of the forge, into creating an indestructible door to protect his treasure hoard. Ornn did exactly as commanded… but neglected to include any method of opening said door, leaving the troll as trapped outside as any thief. Later on, the indestructible door got between Braum and saving a troll child. Now, usually any object in that position ceases to be so in short order, but this one even Braum couldn't touch... so he smashed through the mountain around it, and picked it up to use himself, under the logic that if it can stand up to him, it can stand up to anything his enemies might throw at him. Usually he uses it for defense, but...
Braum: Sometimes, shield becomes smashing board.
- A type of zombie in Plants vs. Zombies carries a screen door to protect himself, which has high durability and shields him from most straight-shot attacks. The way to defeat the zombie easily is to either by using a Fume-shroom or Gloom-shroom, whose fume attacks can penetrate through the door; using catapult plants that can lob attacks over the door; or by snatching the door from the zombie using a Magnet-shroom.
- In The Order of the Stick, Thog breaks through a door and immediately uses it as an improvised weapon.
- In Rusty and Co., the Gelatinous Cube tears two magical, intelligent doors off their hinges and paddles enemies with them. The doors are very unhappy about it.
