Berserk Board Barricade

You're being chased. Quickly, you run inside a building and close the door. But how do you keep the door closed with such a wimpy lock? Haphazardly nail random boards across the doorway!

This is a common trope in animation. Because of Hammerspace, the character can get the needed hammer in an instant, plus a pile of boards and nails. The boards will always crisscross and overlap, as if the character can't line up boards straight, thinks it's more efficient that way, or simply doesn't have time to be precise with their work due to the dire nature of the threat on the other side. Often the boards are placed in ways that would make them bulge out and very hard to nail down.

The character has to watch out for who is assisting him with the barricade, though. Sometimes it's his pursuer, which would in these cases overlap with Absurdly Ineffective Barricade.

Examples of Berserk Board Barricade include:

Anime and Manga

• In anticipation of a typhoon, the Moroboshi family in Urusei Yatsura board up all of the doors and windows this way. Why they didn't have storm shutters in a part of the world prone to typhoons is beyond me.
  • Houses in hurricane-prone areas of the U.S. often don't. Truth in Television?
  • In Japan, storm shutters generally come standard. Rule of Funny.
• The anime of Ranma ½ has a similar episode. There's one sequence where Ranma accidentally ends up barricading himself into a hallway and several other characters in awkward positions (Akane and Nabiki in their rooms, Soun Tendo outside, Genma out of the toilet when he really needs to go).
  • This also happens in one arc of the manga where Ranma and most of the Tendos are trying to prevent Hinako from proposing to Soun. After Hinako goes outside to gain energy from two fighting dogs, Ranma and Akane hurriedly nail wood to the door and leave a note telling her to stop trying to become Soun's wife. They finish, just before Hinako blasts right through it with a chi attack.
  • In another chapter, Akane gets fed up with Happosai and Ranma, so she kicks them both out of her room and boards up the door. However, it turns out that Happosai managed to not get kicked out and is looking at her lecherously. She screams Ranma's name and Ranma easily breaks through the door in his haste to get to her.
• Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei inverts this trope when Kafuka and Itoshiki-sensei, at Kafuka's suggestion, build a berserk board barricade...to keep a harmless "zashiki warashi" locked insider her home. It Makes Sense in Context.

Films

• In The Mask, the eponymous hero races out of the park, closes the doors, boards them shut, chains them shut, and for good measure, locks the door. The rest of the police force was right behind him the entire time.
• Non-comedic example: In Night of the Living Dead, Ben uses these to board up the doors and windows of the farmhouse.
  • In Tom Savini's 1990 remake, they try to use interior doors to board up the windows only to learn that they're all cheap hollow-core luan doors that couldn't stop a kitten.
• Subverted in Scary Movie 3: A character boards up the front door to his house, but another character is able to open said door normally regardless.
• German soldiers are seen doing this in The Bunker.

Literature

• Vernon Dursley does this in the beginning of The Sorceror's Stone in an attempt to stop Harry's letters from getting into the house. It doesn't work, of course.

Live Action Television

• In the British comedy series, The Goodies, in the episode Bunfight in the O.K. Tearooms a random resident is seen boarding up his house from the outside. Hilarity Ensues as he jumps into a nearby barrel instead.
• Invoked in the Blackadder Goes Forth episode "General Hospital".

General Melchett: Great Scott! Even you know [the secret British plan]! Ah! Ah! Bolt all the doors! Hammer large pieces of crooked wood against the windows! This security leak is far worse than we imagined!

Video Games

• In the MMORPG Urban Dead, characters can build barricades out of literally anything. In about one sixth of the amount of time it takes to stand up.
• In Minecraft, while not always using boards, one can build a wall very quickly to keep a monster away.
• For that matter the same goes for it's 2d counterpart Terraria. Especially useful during Blood Moons.
• This is how they try and keep the zombies out in Nazi Zombies (Call of Duty World at War/Black Ops). Indeed, its such a fundamental part of the game mechanics you get points (to buy weapons) from nailing boards down and a power up called Carpenter auto repairs all windows in the level in this style at once.

Western Animation

• Done in a few Tiny Toon Adventures episodes.
• Common gag in Looney Tunes cartoons, desperate characters may even resort to producing bricks and mortar from Hammerspace and adding a brick wall to the fortifications
• Camp Lazlo, where the Bean Scouts barricade the door of their cabin to keep the Squirrel Scouts out. In order to get the wood for the barricade, they completely dismantle the back wall of their cabin.
• In a segment from The Simpsons' "Treehouse of Horror III" episode spoofing the aforementioned Night of the Living Dead, the family board up the windows in this manner, but when Marge asks Homer if he's boarded up the front door, he absent-mindedly mentions that he hasn't.
• Wakko Warner takes this trope a step further in the Animaniacs episode "Temporary Insanity". In a bid to beat his siblings to the phone (Just roll with it) he first shuts the door, pulls a steel gate in front of it, then a steel door, and then an elevator door! As a finishing touch, he adds a wall of bricks.
• Happens several times in Tom and Jerry.
• In the South Park episode "Butt Out" Cartman wants to star in Rob Reiner's anti-smoking commercial yet the other boys don't want anything to do with him at this point. When Kyle tells him this, Cartman thinks Kyle is trying to trick him because he wants the part himself. That night Cartman boards up Kyle's door so he can't get out. Kyle, who is already outside, reiterates what he said before and it seems for a second that Cartman is considering not to show up. He then continues with his hammering.
• When a priest on Robot Chicken sees a family playing "Humping Robot" he boards up the door and pours gasoline on the ground. Before he throws a match inside, he changes his mind and decides to join them.