It is possible to construct a legend/key manually rather than having the plot
titles all appear in the auto-generated key. This allows, for example, creating
a single legend for the component panels in a multiplot.
Here is an example:
set multiplot layout 3,2 columnsfirst
set style data boxes
plot $D using 0:6 lt 1 title at 0.75, 0.20
plot $D using 0:12 lt 2 title at 0.75, 0.17
plot $D using 0:13 lt 3 title at 0.75, 0.14
plot $D using 0:14 lt 4 title at 0.75, 0.11
set label 1 at screen 0.75, screen 0.22 "Custom combined key area"
plot $D using 0:($6+$12+$13+$14) with linespoints title "total"
unset multiplot