| abstract | - There's a door the heroes must get through! But there's a lock (often involving a complex computer combination lock) in the way. Our heroes have to get past it, to get the weapon, or the artifact or whatever MacGuffin is important to the plot right now. They don't have a brilliant hacker kid like young John Connor or mutant kid like Micah. Somebody tries to pick the lock, or to blow powder on it to see what the most used key combinations may be, or find some way to get the lock open before time runs out. And then along comes The Big Guy who just punches it in, smashes it with a rock, kicks it, blasts it with a weapon, or runs into it head first. The lock gets crushed, sputters feebly, and the door obligingly opens. Occasionally you have a speedster or a robot picking the lock by blazing through all combinations faster than the human eye can follow. This trope is responsible for Evil Overlord List entry #96: "My door mechanisms will be designed so that blasting the control panel on the outside seals the door and blasting the control panel on the inside opens the door, not vice versa." It's also a subtrope of Cutting the Knot. And when the magic phrase Open Sesame fails, you still have this as an alternative; sometimes the party using force to open the door will even say "Open, says me!" See also Dungeon Bypass and Steal the Surroundings. Related to Axe Before Entering. The Subverted Trope, where they bust down the door, and an ally notes they didn't need to, is We Have the Keys. And the trope wherein they could've used the door but smash through the wall instead is There Was a Door. Examples of Open Says Me include:
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